“Oh, my, really!” sneered the foreigner.  “How we have grown!  Please don’t bite me with your sharp tongue.  As you say, yes, I did turn her loose, and do you know that now she has been sent away?  Put in a hospital!  Bah!  It is in an asylum for the crazy” (Dol was very foreign now), “where the state, this great big powerful state, shall take all that poor harmless woman’s money!  Could I not allow her to live a little when she paid me?  But they will kill her and get paid for the murder!  That’s the way they treat the poor crazy folks in their big stone prisons!” she alleged angrily.

“She has been declared insane?”

“Declared insane!” she mocked.  “You call it that?  Yes, I call it kidnapped, and poor old Zola was so harmless if they would but let her scream and play at acting.”

Sally was dumbfounded.  The woman who had played ghost was really a lunatic, and this unprincipled adventuress had dared allow her to get into a place like Lenox, and to go about the countryside without restraint!  Sally felt almost sick at the thought, and having walked the full length of the hedge-rows she attempted to end the unpleasant interview.

“If you will excuse me—­” she began feebly.

“But I shall not,” almost shouted the angry South American.  “I know what this place can do!  I know how your spiteful Jane Allen and her chums got me out—­”

“Stop!” cried Sally sharply.  “Jane Allen is my friend, and I will not hear her spoken of in that manner.”

“Your friend!” and she sneered like some animal snorting.  “She may make of you a cat’s paw to play at her feet, but she shall never be your friend.  If she just knows what you are—­”

But Sally turned and deliberately fled from her persecutor.  She could no longer stand the tirade, and nothing that she seemed able to do or say had any softening effect upon the angry young woman.  Suppose she did meet some of the girls and attempt to tell what she knew of Sally’s secret?  Would anyone stand by and listen?  Was not this expelled pupil actually trespassing even to be upon Wellington grounds?

It was getting close to the noon hour and studies were to be resumed after the luncheon period.  Students who had taken advantage of the morning recess to be out at some favorite sports were now returning in flocks, and Sally quickened her steps to reach Lenox before the rush of late comers.  She turned just once to see if Dolorez was going through the grounds to leave at the opposite gate, but the blazing red coat was not in sight.

“She probably knows some other way of leaving,” thought Sally, recalling the uncanny knowledge of the campus secrets that had been responsible for the entrance of the eccentric Madam Z—.

In the hall Sally met a very much excited Bobbie.  “Oh, did she eat you up?  Or put horns on you?  Or turn you into a goat?” she began.  It happened that the hallway was clear just then.  “Wasn’t she furious?  I am so glad I escaped!  Come in and tell me all about it.”