Whatever it was she was doing might be wrong, but, after all, she had a good deal of provocation, and she had been far more patient already than anyone who knew her would have expected her to be.
"I bet they're just trying to work her up to trying to get even," Bessie reflected to herself. "Gladys Cooper knows her, so she must know what a temper Dolly has, and she must be surprised to think that she hasn't managed to arouse her yet."
That thought made Bessie gladder than ever that she had decided to follow Dolly. While she was not in the plot herself, she meant to be in it if Dolly got into trouble, or if, as Bessie half feared, it turned out that her chum was walking into a trap. Moreover, she was entirely ready to take her share of the blame, if there was to be any blame, and to let others believe that she had shared Dolly's secret from the first and had deliberately taken part in the plot.
Dolly's movements were puzzling. Bessie had expected her to go to the back of the camp, and when she heard laughter and the sound of loud talking coming from the boathouse, which was, of course, on the very shore of the lake, Bessie breathed a sigh of relief, since it seemed to her that the fact that the other girls were there would greatly increase Dolly's chance of escaping detection.
But instead of taking advantage of what Bessie regarded as a great piece of luck, Dolly paused to listen to the sounds from the boathouse, and then turned calmly and walked in its direction.
For a moment an unworthy suspicion crossed Bessie's mind.
"I wonder if she can be going to see them—to make up with them?" Bessie asked herself.
But she answered her own question with an emphatic no almost as soon as she had asked it. Dolly's anger the night before and that afternoon had not been feigned.
As she neared the boathouse, Dolly moved very cautiously. Even though she could see her, Bessie could not hear her, and she even had difficulty in following Dolly's movements, for she had put on a dark coat, and was an inconspicuous object in the darkness.
From the boathouse there now came the sound of music; a phonograph had been started, and it was plain from the shuffling of feet that the girls inside were dancing. Dolly crept closer and closer, until she reached one of the windows. Even as she did it a sharp, shrill voice cried out, and Bessie saw someone rush toward her from the darkness of a clump of trees near the boathouse. It was a trap, after all! Bessie rushed forward, but before she had taken more than a couple of steps, and before, indeed, her assailant could reach her, Dolly had accomplished her purpose.