“I have the honor of my sister a little nearer my heart than the honor of the school, Miss Larned,” said Gwen. “I care more what people think of Gladys than what they think of the acting, though I would have worked hard to make that play go. But as to any one taking my place, my Cousin Janet here has been trying my part at home and she acts it better than I do. She has acted a great deal before she came to New York. She could do it, if she would. I certainly must resign it under the circumstances.”
Jan looked at Gwen in surprise at this suggestion, not guessing that it was a bit of pure malice, intended to heighten Miss Larned’s regret.
That lady turned to Jan graciously. “Janet an actress!” she exclaimed. “I am surprised. Though Janet has shown such admirable scholarship since we had the pleasure of receiving her into our care, I do not know why I should wonder at discovering this accomplishment to be hers. Then, my child, if your cousin persists in her refusal to listen to reason, and to injure herself and us for her sister’s sake, I will give her part to you, if you are as capable of performing it as she thinks you.”
“Thank you, Miss Larned,” said Jan hastily, “but I wouldn’t take it for the world. I feel just as Gwen does about Gladys—of course, because an own cousin is the very next thing to your sister—and I must give up even the little part in the play which I have already learned. I wouldn’t take part in it for anything unless Gladys has a chance to clear herself of whatever you think she has done and is proved guilty. Neither Gwen nor I would take her part if she deserved punishment. We only want you, please, to let her know what she is accused of.”
“I have told you that she already knows. If she does not choose to tell you, that is her own affair. I must wish you good-day, young ladies. I really have no time to waste on arguments with my pupils.” And Miss Larned made them a curt bow of dismissal and sailed from the room, leaving them to find their way out as they could. She was not dull enough to fail to perceive that Gwen had suggested Jan’s acting merely for the pleasure of hearing the girl refuse to accept the part.
With this small satisfaction to comfort her, Gwen returned slowly with Jan to her home. It was maddening to feel that the Christmas festivities were to end in disgrace to Gladys, loss of her own part in the play, which Gwen could not help knowing she could act well, and universal discomfort. And still less endurable was the situation to both Gwen and Jan that they felt convinced that Gladys’s friends had acted treacherously toward her and that they were powerless to prove their theory or bring about justice.
CHAPTER XI
“THERE NEVER WAS KNIGHT LIKE THE YOUNG LOCHINVAR”
The days that followed Gladys’s downfall were far from pleasant at school. Gladys was miserable, Gwen and Jan indignant, and their classmates divided into two camps, of which the larger was strongly partisan of the Grahams, but the second sided against them or “didn’t know.” The play, recast and with an incompetent girl in Gwen’s place, went badly at its rehearsals, and the Misses Larned were as cool to Gwen, who was responsible—or whom they chose to consider responsible—for its disaster as they dared be to one of two valuable pupils who had two more sisters at home growing up to scholar’s estate. Gladys had been with difficulty persuaded by Gwen and Jan to keep the story of her wrongs a secret at home until later. These would-be detectives hoped to discover the cause of Miss Larned’s injustice, and they knew that if Mrs. Graham learned of her daughter’s treatment she would demand instant reparation or take her from school, and the mystery would remain a mystery to the end. But at the close of the third day Gwen and Jan were no nearer its solution, and Gladys was passionately declaring that she couldn’t and wouldn’t keep the secret any longer. She knew, she said, that her mother “would take her away from the horrid old Hydra if she heard how she had been treated, and for her part she did not think any one with any self-respect ought to be willing to have her stay—much less try to keep her there.”
Just as Gladys was on the eve of becoming utterly unmanageable, chance put the clue to the affair into Jan’s hands, or perhaps it was good fairies, approving her unselfish desire to help her cousin, forgetful of Gladys’s many unkindnesses to her.