“You haven’t any right to pry into my affairs, and I shan’t tell you a thing.” Secure in the knowledge that only Ruth had seen her in the automobile, Blanche’s dismay changed to defiance. “Whatever I choose to do is no concern of yours. Kindly mind your own business.”
“This happens to be my business.” Ruth was not to be shaken in her purpose. “You were to be my guest in the first place. When we changed our plans, I included you in them. I was warned that you had an axe to grind. I didn’t believe it. But that doesn’t matter now. What does matter is that while you are Miss Drexal’s guest, you shan’t do again as you did to-day. If you expect to go automobiling with a young man, then you must do so openly, and with Miss Drexal’s consent.”
“I want you to distinctly understand that I am engaged to that young man. I have a perfect right to accept his attentions, if I choose.” Defense of her conduct wrung this admission from Blanche’s unwilling lips.
“Not in the way you did to-day,” maintained Ruth. “What do you suppose Miss Drexal would say if she knew this? She is not merely our hostess, she is our guardian. She feels responsible for all of us. If, as you say, he is your fiancé, then you should have announced your engagement to her, and asked her if he might call on you openly.”
“You don’t understand things at all,” retorted Blanche hotly.
“But I intend to before I leave this room!” Ruth steadily assured. “You will have to do one of two things, Blanche. Either you must explain the whole affair to me, or else go to Miss Drexal and tell her.”
Blanche gasped angrily, but offered no reply. She glowered at Ruth for an instant, then dropped her eyes. “If I did tell you, you’d go and tell her anyway,” she muttered.
“Perhaps I wouldn’t. I’d rather not if we can settle things between ourselves. That’s why I’m asking you to be frank with me.”
Something in the earnest words awoke Blanche to the fact that Ruth really did wish to help her, rather than expose her folly. “I suppose I’d better tell you,” she said sulkily. “My mother doesn’t know I’m engaged, and I don’t want her to. She forbade me even to be friends with Donald. She doesn’t allow him to call on me. That’s why I was anxious to get away from home this summer. I thought if I went to visit you, he could come to see me there and pretend to be my cousin. Then Miss Drexal changed things all around and upset our plans. So he came up here, and is staying in Lakeview.
“I thought I could see him once in a while and no one would know it. No one would have, either, if that old storm hadn’t come up. I was going to walk home from the place where I met him this morning. It’s about a mile from here. We drove to Lakeview and had luncheon there at a hotel. We left the machine there and walked all around the town. While we were driving back, the sky began to get dark. He was afraid I’d get caught in the storm, so he brought me almost home. I never thought you girls would come back that way,” she ended in an aggrieved tone.
Ruth’s feelings, as she listened to this tale, were decidedly varied. So this was the fabled axe that she had willingly turned the grindstone to sharpen. She had often heard Emmy privately refer to Blanche as “boy-struck.” It was also generally known among the Hillside girls that Blanche preferred the reading of sentimental fiction to study. It now appeared as though she had introduced Romance into her own life with a vengeance. For a long moment Ruth silently regarded the pouting features of the narrator.
“It seems to me,” she said slowly, “that it was a good thing we did come back that way. I am glad that none of the others saw you, though. You haven’t been fair with me, Blanche, but I’m going to give you a chance to be fair now. I want you to promise me that you will write to this young man to-night, telling him that you cannot see him again while you are here at the cottage.”
“But I can’t do that!” was the protesting cry. “He’d think me—”
“It’s not so much what he may think as what others ............