Part 32 (1/2)
Then followed a pacifying account of Helka's wonderful talent, and the intimation that she might be a royal personage in hiding. Jane ran her deep gray eyes over the column, and as she read they seemed to deepen, intensified with indignation, so that the fires usually hidden, now threatened to blaze outright. In sort of a panic she quickly pa.s.sed the little sheet to Mrs. Weatherbee. Followed such an adjusting of gla.s.ses, and such a poring over that column, Jane need not wait to hear what the director thought of the astonis.h.i.+ng publication. Every move indicated intense indignation. Finally Mrs. Weatherbee looked up, caught Jane's eye and breathed deeply.
”Who could have done that?” she exclaimed in a very low voice.
”Isn't it awful?” Jane returned.
”Have you any idea how it came-about?”
”The reporter, Miss Nevins, was with Marian Seaton at the Breslin game,” Jane answered frankly. ”Of course, Marian-dislikes Helen.”
”Oh, that's it! Well, this seems to be the final stroke. I have done everything possible, and made all sorts of allowances for Marian, because she has been handicapped by a frivolous mother, and an indulgent father. Of late when affairs at Wellington a.s.sumed a really serious turn, I felt our patience and endurance had been exhausted, and I may tell you, my dear, Miss Seaton was marked for leaving Wellington.”
”Oh, that would be too bad,” sighed the considerate Jane.
”Yes, I agree with you, but Miss Seaton has given so much annoyance.
Only your own intervention more than once saved her. And this, in face of the fact that you were the most-abused victim of her idiosyncracies.
But this is altogether too serious to admit of forgiveness. There's no telling what mischief that absurd article may work.”
Jane accepted again the despised sheet, and reading the disputed ”story” over more carefully, she visioned all sorts of dire calamities coming to defenceless little Helen, through this open announcement of ”The Mystery of Wellington College.” It was too awful-too horrible, after all their carefully executed plans, to save her from publicity.
As the train sped on to New York scenes at Wellington had also s.h.i.+fted.
Marian Seaton and Dolorez Vincez were having their inevitable reckoning.
Dolorez had sought out Marian-going so far as to lie in wait for the hara.s.sed girl, as she left the grounds for her noon trip to the postoffice.
”You have got to come in here and listen to me,” commanded the young woman, who had been posing as a young girl. She grasped the arm of Marian, the latter frightened to the point of running away. ”Do you think you can leave me like this?”
”But, Dolorez,” begged Marian, ”I did not promise to do anything I have not done. I got all the girls to agree to take treatments--”
”Yes, but what you should have done was to get that firey little Allen out of the way. She has spoiled everything. Now, what am I to do with all this junk,” indicating a miscellaneous collection of stuff, misnamed furniture, that glared at both girls from piles and heaps in all four corners of the disordered room.
”You seem to forget, Miss Vincez, that it is I who am really suffering from all this,” spoke Marian with prideable hauteur. ”I have gotten myself all but expelled from college, I have lost every friend, and I have done something, the result of which I am afraid to-to contemplate.
And now you are going to charge me with failing you!”
A scornful laugh accompanied by the shrugging of a pair of over-developed shoulders, was Marian's answer. Dolorez was an adventurer-and Marian her latest victim!
”You are very squeamish, it seems to me for one in your place,” sneered the Brazilian. ”What about your debts?”
”Oh!” gasped the overwrought Marian. ”Please don't!”
To express at least conditional pity for Marian Seaton is but human.
She had made flagrant mistakes, but after all she was only a poor, neglected girl. Neglected by a foolish, frivolous mother, and variously indulged or rashly disciplined by a father, who made his money storming the business world through the medium of over-worked and underpaid employees. His bl.u.s.tering ill-trained nature had served him in a way with factory workers, but it was not the sort of method from which to expect success when applied to a young, good-looking and ambitious girl, his only daughter Marian. Not knowing what it was she missed in her short life, the girl, now stood confronted with a record of deceit, and debts, and school dishonor. We will not yet condemn her without at least a trial.
The two, Marian and Dolorez, had stormed and threatened, until it was clear neither could hope to obtain any satisfaction from the other, under such conflict. Marian finally broke away literally from her captor, who now stood in the doorway of the ill-fated beauty parlor, glaring after the vanis.h.i.+ng figure, all the venomous hatred, and avengeful threats glaring from her black eyes, and striking through the ill-natured lines of her Latin features.