Three days after she had dispatched William to Harriet’s home with the fateful package, her father returned. Having occasion to enter the First National Bank of Sanford on business, he heard there a tale from its vice-president that sent him hurrying from the bank in wrathful quest of his unmanageable daughter. In taking this step, Mr. Wendell had been actuated by what he believed to be the best of motives. As a close friend of Mr. La Salle, the vice-president had deemed it his duty to inform the Frenchman of the affair. A rigid advocate of the belief that the younger generation was allowed entirely too much liberty, he had not been in sympathy with the delicate consideration the Lookouts had exhibited toward Mignon. He was of the opinion that she should be severely punished, and accordingly constituted himself as a committee of one to act in the matter.
Completely out of patience with his lawless daughter, Mr. La Salle had left the bank, enraged determination in his eye. He had proceeded directly to Sanford High School, insisting there that Mignon be released from study for the day. With no word of greeting other than a stern, “Wicked, ungrateful girl, I have found you out,” he marched her home with him. Once safely in the confines of his own residence, he let loose on her a torrent of recrimination, half English, half French, that reduced her to the lowest depths of terrified humility. At the end of it, he pronounced doom. “You shall go to a convent school at once. You shall not have the honor to graduate in the same class with the excellent young women you have so shamefully treated. In a convent school, all the time you will be watched. Then, perhaps, you will learn that it pays not to do wrong.”
In vain Mignon wept, pleaded, promised. This time her father was adamant. He sternly forbade her return to Sanford High School and would hardly allow her to leave the house. He visited Miss Archer, stating gloomily to the surprised principal that due to Mignon’s own failings he had decided to remove her from high school and place her in the more strict environment of a convent school. To her kindly proposal that he give his erring daughter another chance, he made emphatic refusal. “She has defied me one time too often,” he declared. “Now she must of a truth be severely punished.”
He wrote a note to the Lookout Club, apologizing for his daughter’s shortcomings, and he also wrote another, much in the same strain, to Marjorie Dean, thanking her for past kindnesses and releasing her from her promise. In the note to Marjorie he stated his unrelenting resolve regarding Mignon. Though she had small reason to feel sympathy for Mignon, nevertheless Marjorie pitied her whole-heartedly. As she solemnly remarked to her captain, it was very hard on Mignon to be snatched from school almost on the very eve of her graduation.
Meanwhile, Mignon was racking her troubled brain for some means of evading the fate her father had thrust upon her. Thus far she had not dared write Rowena and confess that she had been frightened into returning the Lookouts’ money. She had known only too well the weight of her friend’s displeasure even in small matters. Rowena would never forgive her for thus having so easily given in. Urged on by the conviction that no one save Rowena could suggest a way out of her present difficulty, Mignon finally sat down and wrote her a most garbled account of her defeat. She represented herself to be the victim of a deep-laid plot and a much-abused person all around. She ended with a vigorous tirade against her father and appealed desperately to Rowena for help out of her difficulties. Her father was already in communication with the head of the school to which he had decreed she should go, she informed Rowena. “If you are truly my friend,” she wrote, “try to think of some way to help me out of this trouble.”
By keeping an alert watch on the mail, Mignon managed to lay hands on Rowena’s answer to her plea, which arrived three days after the sending of her letter to her boon companion. It arrived at her home during her father’s absence and she lost no time in locking herself in her room, there to read it undisturbed. The first two pages consisted entirely of Rowena’s brutally frank opinion of her for being so cowardly. The third and fourth, however, held a suggestion that fairly took Mignon’s breath. At first she mentally flung it aside as impossible. Considering it further, she became better pleased with it. After a half hour of somber reflection, she decided to adopt it.
Mignon was not the only one, however, who had a problem to consider. Marjorie Dean was also wrestling with a difficulty of her own. Since the receipt of Mr. La Salle’s note, she had thought frequently and sorrowfully of wayward Mignon. Several times she had attempted to answer the Frenchman’s note, but could think of nothing to say. She did not approve of his plan to cut his daughter off from the graduation she had so nearly won. Still, she could hardly set down her opinion in a letter to him. After several days of troubled reflection, she decided to go to him and ask him to reconsider his determination.
To her friends she said nothing of this; to her captain she said a great deal. Mrs. Dean made no attempt to dissuade her. “You must fight it out by yourself, Lieutenant,” she counseled. “If you feel that Mignon is really worth your good offices, then by all means go to her father. Remember, she has never played fairly with you. You are still in the dark as to what means she employed to estrange poor little Lucy Warner from you.”
“I know it,” sighed Marjorie. “Still, I feel so sorry for her that I can’t bear to stand by and not try to help her. I think I’ll go to Mr. La Salle’s office after school is over for the day.”
In order not to arouse her friends’ curiosity, she strolled home from school with them as usual. Stopping merely to salute her captain, she faced about and hurried toward the main street of the little city on which his office was situated. To her deep disappointment she found his office locked. It meant a trip to his residence after dinner that evening. She must lose no further time in obtaining an interview with him, else it might be too late. He had written that Mignon was to be sent away immediately.