"You are very smart and courageous in your conversation now, but you won't be when you feel the full pinch of Coventry life. Just picture to yourself what it will feel like never to be spoken to by your companions, to be without friends in the midst of a lot of girls, to be publicly expelled from the Penwernians."
"Oh, I don't mind that," said Christian.
"You haven't the remotest idea what it means or you wouldn't say so. Your mistresses may continue to like you, but there isn't a good, nice girl in the school who will dare to be seen speaking to you. You will live on here year after year, and not until all the present girls leave the school will you have any chance of becoming popular. Now, naturally you would be popular; you are just the sort of girl. That power of yours of telling stories is an immense attraction. It might win the heart of nearly every girl in the place. But after your sin is known no one will listen to you. And why, do you think? Because the committee of the Penwernians will forbid it. Now, of course, the mistresses have great power in the school; but, although they would not like to own it, their power is nothing at all compared to the power of our secret society. If you, who have just been made a member of it, were at once expelled because of conduct which makes it impossible for us to have anything to do with you, you would be in a sorry position. You can think the thing over. I don't want to press you, but my advice to you is to take advantage of Miss Lavinia Peacock's kindness and not to tell what you have done."
Susan's words came out slowly. She made a pause now and then, and these pauses were very effective. Her ugly face was full of deep shadows in the firelight. Her eyes were scarcely visible at all. It was only her white teeth that gleamed now and then. As she stood she herself made a great shadow, and it seemed to Christian that Susan was a bad girl, and that she hated and, alas! feared her.
"If I could only speak to Star," she thought. "What am I to do?"
"What I say to you is in absolute confidence," continued Susan, who knew that she was at last making an impression. "For your own sake you ought really not to tell. It doesn't matter to me. If you do tell you will find it distinctly—yes, dreadfully—unpleasant. Miss Peacock must have known that fact when she so wisely resolved not to acquaint the girls with the truth."
"But I don't care to live under a lie or to sail under false colors," said Christian slowly.
"You are a little goose," replied Susan; and now she changed both her attitude and manner, and coming close, she laid her hand upon the bed. Christian's hand was lying outside the counterpane, and Susan caught it and held it firmly.
"You are one of us," she said, "and of course we all want to like you. I for one feel that I could adore you. It is because I pity you that I speak."