Now Olive did not have the least idea that in going out alone and without permission she would be breaking an iron law of Primrose Hall. Nothing was farther from her mind than disobedience, but no one had yet told her of the school rules and regulations and taking a walk alone seemed to her the most natural thing in the world. Had she only waited a few hours longer she must have understood differently, for the students were expected to assemble that very morning to hear what was required of them at Primrose Hall.
As quietly as possible Olive now slipped on her coat and hat, creeping along the hall on tiptoes so as not to disturb the other sleepers, and for the same reason she as quietly unlocked the big front door. But once out on the lawn, so innocent was she of trying to escape unnoticed, that she paused for several moments to gaze back at the great house she was about to leave.
Primrose Hall was so handsome and imposing that its new pupil felt a thrill of admiration as she looked upon it. A red brick mansion of the old colonial period, it was set in a lovely garden with flowers and shrubs growing close about the house and an avenue of elm trees leading down to the gate. Back of the house was an English garden with a border of box and a sun-dial at the end of a long path. This morning only a few late asters were in bloom in the garden and bushes of hardy hydrangeas with their great blossoms now turning rose and brown from the first early autumn frosts. The house and estate of twelve acres had belonged in the family of Miss Katherine Winthrop for the past five generations and Olive smiled a little over her queer conceit, for the house somehow suggested its present owner to her. Surely Miss Winthrop had appeared just as imposing and aristocratic as her old home on first meeting with her the day before, but far colder and more imposing than any mere pile of brick and stone.
Primrose Hall was of so great size that it included all the bedrooms and reception rooms necessary for its pupils and teachers, and the only other school buildings about the grounds were the recitation hall and two sorority houses devoted to the pleasures of the girls. Olive had never heard of secret societies, yet she wondered what the mystic words “Kappa” and “Theta” meant, inscribed above their doors.
Primrose Hall had been recommended to Ruth Drew and the ranch girls by Peter Drummond, the New York friend whom they had learned to know at the Yellowstone Park, but apart from its excellent reputation as a finishing school, their choice had fallen upon it because of the far-famed beauty of its historic grounds. In this same old house Washington and Lafayette had been known to stay, and who can guess how many powdered belles and beaus may have flirted with one another in the garden by the old sun-dial?
When Olive had grown tired of the views about the houses she determined to extend her walk over a portion of the estate, and coming to a low, stone wall, climbed over it without thinking or caring just where it led her. Being outdoors once more and free to wander as she choose after two weeks’ confinement, one aboard a stuffy train and the other in a palace-like hotel in New York, was now so inspiring that Olive felt like singing aloud. Indeed, it seemed to her that her own personality, which had somehow vanished since leaving the ranch, had come back to her this morning like a dear, familiar garment. It was as though she had lately been wearing fine clothes that did not belong to her and in this hour had donned once again her own well-worn dress.
Running along with the fleetness and quietness of her early Indian days, soon the truant found herself in a woods thick with underbrush and trees never seen before by a Wyoming girl. The air was delicious, the leaves sparkled with the melting of the frost, there was a splendid new wine of youth and romance abroad in the world and Olive completely forgot that she was in the midst of a highly civilized community and not in the heart of a virgin forest. Indeed, it was not until she had come entirely out of the woods that her awakening took place. Then she found herself apparently in some one’s private yard, for she stood facing a white house set up on a hill with a tower at the top of it and queer gabled windows on either side. At the entrance to its big front door stood two absurd iron dogs, and yet there was nothing in any of these ordinary details to make the onlooker turn crimson and then pale. And yet as she stared up at the house the idea that had suddenly come to her seemed so utterly, so absurdly impossible that surely she must be losing her senses.
For five minutes Olive waited without taking her gaze from the house, and then with a shrug of her shoulders turned and walked back into the woods. At first she paid no particular attention to what direction she was taking until all at once, hearing footsteps not far behind, she felt reasonably sure they were following hers.
CHAPTER II
IN DISGRACE
It was ridiculous for Olive to have been so frightened with so slight cause, yet the thought that some one might be in pursuit of her filled her with a nervous terror. To the people not afflicted with timidity, most fears are ridiculous, and yet no single weakness is harder to overcome. Of the four ranch girls, Olive was the only timid one, but before one criticizes her, remember her childhood. Now with her heart pounding and her breath coming in short gasps, she quickened her pace into a run, recalling at the same time their chaperon’s forgotten instruction that she must no longer expect the happy freedom of their western lands. But the faster the frightened girl ran the faster the traveler back of her appeared to be following. And now Olive dared not hide deeper in the woods, knowing that the hour was growing late and that any added delay would make her late for breakfast.