"Jean, do you mean that Eleanor—has resigned—from Dramatic Club?"
Pleasure and bewilderment struggled for the mastery of Betty's face.
"Yes," said Jean carelessly. "Funny you hadn't heard of it, because it's the talk of the whole college. She sent a note in Saturday night, it seems, but nobody outside heard of it till this morning, and now we're all speculating over the whys and wherefores. The Clio girls say that if she did it because she thought she'd rather go into that, she will be doomed to everlasting disappointment. For my part I don't think that was her reason." Jean's tone hinted of deep mysteries.
"Of course not," said Betty indignantly. "Can't they see, Jean, that a girl has got to have a big, splendid reason for doing a thing like that?"
"A big reason all right, but I don't know about the splendor," returned Jean cheerfully, shouldering her way across the stream of girls in the hall to join Beatrice Egerton.
To Jean's disappointment Beatrice had nothing to say about the resignation, except that it was Eleanor's own affair and that all the talk about it was utter nonsense. Then Jean, warming to her work, ventured a direct attack.
"But Miss Egerton, wasn't there something queer about that story of Eleanor's—the one that got her in? You were going to tell me once, but you never did."
"I was going to tell you once, but I never did?" repeated Beatrice with an extreme affability which those who knew her better than Jean would have recognized as dangerous. "Go and ask Eleanor Watson that question if you care to, Miss Eastman. I admire her far too much to wish to discuss her private affairs with you. Thank you, I should like to go to your house-play, but I have another engagement. The night isn't set? But really, I'm so busy just now I can't promise, you know."
Beatrice Egerton had not spent four years at Harding College for nothing. She was incapable of heroism herself, but she could appreciate certain types of it in others, and she was bitterly ashamed of the part she had played in Eleanor's affairs.
"Miss Wales," she said an hour later, when her path from class to class crossed with Betty's, "where is Eleanor? I can't wait another minute to see her."
Betty explained that Eleanor had not appeared at chapel or morning classes.