"Are you going home, Eleanor?" she asked timidly, merely for the sake of
saying something friendly.

Eleanor turned back impatiently. "You're the tenth person who's asked me
that," she said. "Why shouldn't I be?"

"Why, no reason at all--" began Betty. But Eleanor had vanished.

Once in her own room she locked the door and gave free rein to the fury
of passion and remorse that held her in its thrall. Jim's visit had
brought out all her nobler impulses. She had caught a glimpse of herself
as she would have looked in his eyes, and the scorn of her act that she
had felt at intervals all through the fall and winter--that had prevented
any real enjoyment of her stolen honors and kept her from writing home
about them,--had deepened into bitter self-abnegation. But Jim had come
and gone. He still believed in her, for he did not know what she had
done. Nobody knew. Nobody would ever know now. It was absurd to fear
discovery after all these months. So Eleanor had argued, throwing care
and remorse to the winds, and resolving to forget the past and enjoy life
to the full.

Then, just at the moment of greatest triumph, had come Mr. Blake's
startling announcement. He had not told her what he had done or meant to
do, nor how he had found out about the story, nor who shared his secret;
and Eleanor had been too amazed and frightened to ask. Now, in the
solitude of her room, she drew her own swift conclusions. It was a plot
against her peace of mind, his coming up to lecture. Who had arranged it?
Who indeed but Betty Wales? She knew Mr. Blake intimately, it seemed, and
she had such horribly strict ideas of honesty. She would never forgive
her own sister for cheating. "She must have seen 'The Quiver' on my