On the floor, near her bed, where Patty Fairchild had left her coat and hat, Florence made another discovery.  Two small, folded slips of paper lay there, dropped by Miss Fairchild when she put on her coat in the darkening room.  They were the replies to Patty’s whispered questions in the game on the steps—­the pledged Truth, written by Henry Rooter and Herbert Atwater on their sacred words and honours.  The infatuated pair had either overestimated Patty’s caution, or else each had thought she would so prize his little missive that she would treasure it in a tender safety, perhaps pinned upon her blouse (at the first opportunity) over her heart.  It is positively safe to say that neither of the two veracities would ever have been set upon paper had Herbert and Henry any foreshadowing that Patty might be careless; and the partners would have been seized with the utmost horror could they have conceived the possibility of their trustful messages ever falling into the hands of the relentless creature who now, without an instant’s honourable hesitation, unfolded and read them.

“Yes if I got to tell the truth I know I have got pretty eyes,” Herbert had unfortunately written.  “I am glad you think so too Patty because your eyes are too Herbert Illingsworth Atwater, Jr.”

And Mr. Henry Rooter had likewise ruined himself in a coincidental manner: 

“Well Patty my eyes are pretty but suppose I would like to trade with yours because you have beautiful eyes also, sure as my name is Henry Rooter.”

Florence stood close to the pink-shaded electric drop-light over her small white dressing-table, reading again and again these pathetically honest little confidences.  Her eyelids were withdrawn to an unprecedented retirement, so remarkably she stared; while her mouth seemed to prepare itself for the attempted reception of a bulk beyond its capacity.  And these plastic tokens, so immoderate as to be ordinarily the consequence of nothing short of horror, were overlaid by others, subtler and more gleaming, which wrought the true significance of the contortion—­a joy that was dumfounding.

Her thoughts were first of Fortune’s kindness in selecting her for a favour so miraculously dovetailing into the precise need of her life; then she considered Henry and Herbert, each at this hour probably brushing his hair in preparation for the Sunday evening meal, and both touchingly unconscious of the calamity now befalling them; but what eventually engrossed her mind was a thought about Wallie Torbin.

This Master Torbin, fourteen years of age, was in all the town the boy most dreaded by his fellow-boys, and also by girls, including many of both sexes who knew him only by sight—­and hearing.  He had no physical endowment or attainment worth mention; but boys who could “whip him with one hand” became sycophants in his presence; the terror he inspired was moral.  He had a special over-development