"Well?"
"After one or two of the girls had said what they thought, he turned straight to Eleanor Watson. 'And you, Miss Watson,' he said, 'what do you think? Is this fine moral feeling strong enough to stand a strain? Would you be willing to risk one thoroughly dishonest student not to overthrow it?' She got awfully white, and I could see her cup shake in her hand, but she said very quietly, 'I quite agree with what has already been said, Mr. Blake.'"
"And then?"
"Then he said 'Indeed!' again. But when the girls got up to go and he bid them each good-bye, he managed to keep Eleanor on some pretext about wanting to finish an argument that they'd begun at dinner. Miss Ferris kept me to know about a Hilton House girl who was down at the infirmary when I was and finally had to be sent home; and as we stood talking at the other side of the room, I distinctly heard Mr. Blake say, 'The editor of "The Quiver," Miss Watson.'"
"Did Miss Ferris hear it too?"
"Probably not. Anyway it wouldn't mean anything to her. The next minute Eleanor Watson was gone, and then I went too. Betty, we must run back this minute. He's going to begin."
As far as her information about "The Tendencies of the Modern Drama" was concerned, Betty Wales might quite as well have been enjoying herself at "The Hand of Fate." She sat very still, between two girls she had never seen before, and apparently listened intently to the speaker. As a matter of fact, she heard scarcely a word that he said. Her thoughts and her eyes were fixed on Eleanor, who was sitting with Beatrice Egerton, well up on the middle aisle. Like Betty, she seemed to be absorbed in following the thread of Mr. Blake's argument. She laughed at his jokes, applauded his clever stories. But there was a hot flush on her cheeks and a queer light in her eyes that bore unmistakable evidence to the struggle going on beneath her forced attention.
After the lecture Betty was waiting near the door for Helen and Alice, when Eleanor brushed past her.
"Are you going home, Eleanor?" she asked timidly, merely for the sake of saying something friendly.
Eleanor turned back impatiently. "You're the tenth person who's asked me that," she said. "Why shouldn't I be?"