Madeline smiled lazily down at her. "It's no good worrying, anyhow," she said, "You can't pursue him to his tea. Besides, ten minutes before you met him you'd almost decided that it would be better to let the whole thing out, and be done with it."
"Madeline," demanded Betty in amazement, "how do you guess things?"
"Never mind how," laughed Madeline. "Come and dress for the lecture."
Betty answered Helen's eager questions about the discovery of the pearl pin in absent-minded monosyllables. After all, things were turning out better than she had hoped. Indirectly at least the trip to New York had counted in Eleanor's favor. She need not reproach herself any longer with carelessness in letting Madeline into the secret, and she could feel that it was not for nothing that she had lost her chances of being on the "sub" team.
As she entered the lecture hall that evening with Helen and Alice Waite,
Dorothy King, who was standing by the ticket taker, accosted her.
"I wanted to tell you that Christy is coming back before long," she said.
Having drawn her aside on that flimsy excuse, Dorothy grew suddenly earnest.
"What's he going to do, Betty?" she demanded.
"Why, I don't know," said Betty, blushing at thought of Madeline, "any more than you do. Haven't you seen him?"
"No," explained Dorothy. "He wrote to say that it would be wasting time to argue any more—that he was sure he understood our point of view from you, and now he meant to see for himself and decide."