“I don’t wish to hear one word against Eleanor Savell,” she cried wrathfully.  “She is my friend, and I shall stand up for her.”

“Your friend?” was the united exclamation.

“Yes, my friend,” reiterated Marian stormily, “and she is a true friend, too.  Last year she was initiated into your sorority, and then deliberately slighted and left out of all your plans until in justice to herself she resigned.

“This year you are behaving in the same way with me.  You began it by criticizing my friend, Henry Hammond, and invited him to the judge’s house party for the express purpose of humiliating and insulting him.  The boys of your crowd gave him the cold shoulder when he tried to be friendly and Grace was insufferably rude to him on two different occasions.

“Then you criticized my gowns and made fun of me behind my back, when in reality I was the only one of you who was properly dressed.  You left Mr. Hammond and I both out of the pantomime, and made us last in everything.

“I tried to forgive and forget it all, and be just the same to you, but the first thing that Nora did when we reached Oakdale was to invite part of the crowd to her house and leave the rest of us out, and I am surprised that neither Miriam nor Eva resented the slight.”

Here Grace and Miriam could not refrain from exchanging amused glances, but to Marian, who intercepted their glances, this was the last straw.

Dashing the sorority pin which Nora had previously shoved into her hand to the floor, with a sob of mingled anger and chagrin she exclaimed: 

“How dare you ridicule me to my very face!  I never want to speak to any of you again, and I shall not stay here to be laughed at.”

With these words she fairly ran out of the room, and before any one could expostulate with her, she had for the second time in three months rushed out of the house and away from her real friends.

“She is hopeless,” sighed Grace, as they heard the outer door of the hall close noisily.

“Can you blame her?” said Anne earnestly.  “She has been influenced all along by that Henry Hammond, and now she has fallen into Eleanor’s hands.  We know Eleanor’s state of mind toward us, but why Henry Hammond should encourage Marian to break with her sorority is harder to understand.  Yet he has undoubtedly used his influence against us for some purpose of his own.  Marian’s accusations are foolish and unjust.  You all know that she was so engrossed with that miserable old trouble maker that she repeatedly refused to take part in the different things we planned.”

“Of course, we know that,” agreed Grace.  “I don’t even feel hurt at her outburst to-night.  I wouldn’t think of accepting her resignation from the Phi Sigma Tau, either.  We won’t try to make up with her, but we’ll all keep a starboard eye upon her, and see that she doesn’t come to grief.”

“I had almost reduced her to reason,” remarked Anne, with a rueful smile, “when Nora unfortunately mentioned Eleanor.”