Mary Raymond made a sudden movement to rise. Stubborn she might be, but she was not so dishonorable as to listen to a conversation not intended for her ears. Mignon pulled her back with sudden savage strength. She laid her finger to her lips, her black eyes gleaming with anger.
"Oh, there's no one around. Say, Marjorie, do you think it's really worth while to go out of our way to reform Mignon? Look at her to-night. You'd think she had conquered the universe. She was all smiles when Laurie Armitage asked her to dance. He can't bear her, he told me so last Hallowe'en, after she made all that fuss about her old bracelet. If we hadn't banded ourselves together to find that better self which you are so sure she's carrying around with her, I'd say call it off and forget it. None of us really likes her. You know that, even if you won't say so. She is——"
The waltz time ended in a soft chord and the dancers began trooping through the doorway to the big punch-bowl of lemonade in one corner of the hall. They were just in time to see a lithe figure in pink spring out, catlike, from behind the palm-screened alcove and hear a furious voice cry out, "How dare you insult a guest by talking about her, the moment her back is turned?"
CHAPTER XV
AN IRATE GUEST
Jerry Macy and Marjorie Dean whirled about at the sound of that wrathful voice. Mignon La Salle confronted them, her eyes flashing, her fingers closing and unclosing in nervous rage, looking for all the world like a young tigress.
"Oh, for goodness' sake, some one lead her away!" muttered the Crane to Irma Linton. "I told Hal to-day that, with Mignon aboard the good old party ship, we'd be sure to have fireworks. Real dynamite, too, and no mistake. I wonder what's upset her sweet, retiring disposition?" His boyish face indicated his deep disgust.
"I heard every word you said!" screamed Mignon. Rage had stripped her of the thin veneer of civilization. She was the same young savage who had kicked and screamed her way to whatever she desired when years before she had been the terror of the neighborhood. "So, that's the reason you invited me to your old party! You got together and picked me to pieces and decided to reform me! Just let me tell you that you had better look to yourselves. I don't need your kind offices. You are a crowd of hateful, deceitful, mean, horrible girls! I despise you all! Everyone of you! Do you hear me? I despise you! And you, Jerry Macy, had better be a little careful as to what you gossip about me. I can tell you——"
There came a sudden interruption to the tirade. Through the amazed groups of young people who could not resist lingering to find out what it was all about, Mrs. Dean resolutely made her way.