Miss Vantine’s School for Girls was probably no better and no worse than schools of its kind. It bestowed a superficial training upon its pupils, with an accent upon the social graces. Its graduates were always easily identified by their English a’s, their good diction, their charming manners, and their intensely conventional point of view. Any departure from the Vantine “norm” in the way of investigation or conclusion was discouraged as not nice.

Miss Vantine truly believed in herself as an educator and since her school had held its prestige for thirty years, she had reason to think that other people agreed with her. Her mark on a girl was absolutely guaranteed.

Into this conventional atmosphere Isabelle came from the simple, friendly life of Hill Top; and she found it hateful. It was the spirit rather than the letter which had prevailed in the Benjamin school, but here only the letter counted. The outward forms, correct manners, were emphasized every day; but in the process, the courteous heart was neglected and left out.

The teachers were the custodians of information, and of the law. They bore a perfectly formal relationship to the pupils. Education consisted in pouring facts into the upturned cups—the minds of the pupils. When Isabelle began to question, to dig deeper into the root of things, the why of things—if instead of the usual “Yes, Miss Vantine,” or “No, Miss Vantine,” she demanded basic reasons—the explanation was always repeated, patiently in the same words, and the lesson went on.

Isabelle’s “rough ways” were deplored, and she was reproved every hour in the day. Restraints were imposed on her mind and her body. She was like a healthy, curious young animal, all tied with bonds that she could neither loose nor fight.

As for the girls, there were some old acquaintances among them—Margie Hunter for one. But their talk was of boys, of beaux, and for ever of males! They spent hours conversing about their clothes, or commenting on the manners of their parents and the morals of their parents’ friends. They were deeply interested in the discussion of sex, and there were some phases of the subject dwelt upon which would have sent Miss Vantine down to her grave with the shock, could she have heard their talk.

Now the Benjamins had handled the subject of sex hygiene in their school as a vitally important subject. The girls had been led through the study of botany and zoology, to procreation and the sex relation in human society. Mrs.Benjamin had talked the matter out with her girls with fearless frankness. She had encouraged their questions, she had touched on the pathology of sex, and she had made for them a high ideal of motherhood.

Isabelle realized that the talk of these girls was false and ugly. She said so; and the result was that she was excluded from the intimacy of the leading group. In her letters to Mrs.Benjamin she poured out her whole heart. Protest, misery, loneliness; Mrs.Benjamin sensed them all in the poignant letters the girl sent her. She replied with long, intimate chapters of encouragement and understanding. It was her counsel which kept Isabelle going the first six months of this experience.

She tried with all her might to carry into her daily life the ideals taught and lived at Hill Top. But she seemed to be speaking a language that nobody understood. Her teachers bored her. She found she could keep ahead in her classes with only the most perfunctory study, so the ideal of a high standard for work was the first to go. What was the use? There was not enough to occupy her, so the old restlessness came upon her, with mischievous uses for her excess vitality. She gained a reputation as a law breaker, and she was watched and punished with increasing frequency. Her old leadership in misbehaviour was once more established. The precocious cynicism of her associates began to impress her as clever. She outdid them at it. Mrs.Benjamin’s friendship was her only hope of salvation now. And then, in January, after a brief spell of pneumonia, dear Mrs.Benjamin left the world she had so graced, leaving an aching vacancy behind for her husband and her friends.

To Isabelle it came as her first real sorrow. For weeks after, the girl retired into herself as into a locked room. She could not eat; she did not sleep; she grew thin, and haggard, and pale. Worse than that; in her rebellion at this loss, she grew bitter. She threw this suffering at the feet of God with a threat. She felt herself the victim of eternal injustice. Just as she achieved happiness, or friendship, it was always snatched from her. Always, before, Max had cheated her of things; now it was God.

She came out of it the Isabelle of her early childhood—rÉvoltÉe, enemy to authority, defier of God and the universe. Her wit against them all. She would take what she wanted now, and let them look out for her!

From that time on, she was the acknowledged school “terror.” She put her entire mind upon misbehaving, and she was as ingenious as a monkey. Never a week passed that she was not shut up for an hour in the library with Miss Vantine, who always felt, poor lady, that she was dealing with a manifestation of the devil.

“Did you, or did you not throw an electric lamp on the floor during the algebra lesson, Isabelle?”

“I dropped one on the floor.”

“Don’t equivocate! You threw it”—sternly.

“All right; I threw it”—defiantly.

“Why did you do it?”

“To wake up the class. If you knew how dull that hour is you wouldn’t blame me.”

“Don’t be impertinent!”

“Miss Marshall is a fool. If you ask her a question outside the lesson she has to look it up in the book.”

“You are not here to criticize your teachers, you are here to account for your misbehaviour.”

“I am telling you why I misbehave. I can’t listen to her. Nobody does. She sets us all wild. Everybody was half asleep so I bounced the lamp on the floor. She ought to have been grateful to me for getting their attention.”

“This is the second time this week that you have been reported for insubordination. This conduct cannot continue. I am writing your parents to-day that unless you mend your ways, they must take you away from here. You are contaminating the entire school.”

“They can’t take me away too quickly.”

Miss Vantine thought best to ignore this impertinence.

“You will take twenty demerits, and miss your walk in the park for a week. You may go now.”

The girl sauntered insolently out of the room, leaving Miss Vantine white with rage. She wrote a very firm letter to Mrs.Walter Bryce, who in turn wrote a denunciatory letter to her daughter, and there the matter rested.

One disgrace followed another, and finally the school year dragged to a close. Isabelle went to The Beeches for the summer. There were four months of war to the knife with her mother, the usual number of scrapes, and a violent love affair with Herbert Hunter, home from St. George’s.

“What became of your reformed character?” inquired Wally one day. “I thought the Benjamins had made a human being of you.”

“They nearly did. But Max dragged me off and sent me to that fool Vantine, and I got over being human. What’s the use?”

The Bryces were glad when fall came and she was sent back to the school. As for Isabelle she did not much care where she went. There was a certain satisfaction—an esprit de diablerie—which amused her. Sharp of tongue and of wit, she knew she had a real gift for making herself a nuisance, and she took pride in it.

Miss Vantine warned her at the beginning of the term that she was a marked character, and that unless she behaved herself she could not stay. She tempered her behaviour somewhat during the first term, but it was no use. Like every dog with a bad name, all the mischief in the school was attributed to her. According to schoolgirl canons of loyalty it was an unforgivable sin to tell tales or “give people away,” so Isabelle shouldered the iniquity of the whole school. The teachers hated and feared her.

Miss Vantine bore with her like a martyr—for two reasons. One was that she liked Mrs.Bryce, who had been her pupil; and the other was that she had never yet expelled a girl, and she disliked the idea intensely.

But there came a day in early February of Isabelle’s second year of residence when the end was reached. Herbert Hunter had smuggled a note to her that he was coming to New York to have his tonsils out and he wanted to see her before he went to the hospital. She answered by special delivery and agreed to meet him on Sunday, in the Park. When the girls were entering church on that day, Isabelle was taken with a violent fit of coughing, and was left in the vestibule to quiet herself. She fled to her tryst. But she miscalculated the length of the sermon, and met the school coming out, on the church steps. She was questioned, led home in disgrace. She was accused of truancy; she admitted it, even confessed her rendezvous in the Park.

Miss Vantine had to act this time. She sent a final letter to the Bryces with a sentence of suspension for their daughter, who was packed off home at once, in disgrace. Mrs.Bryce was furious because she and Wally were going off with the Abercrombie Brendons on their yacht. She explained their dilemma to their hostess and she was decent enough to include the girl, but it was a nuisance to have her along.

No time was lost in letting Isabelle feel her disgrace. After a perfunctory greeting, her mother remarked:

“You’ve made a nice record for yourself, haven’t you?”

Isabelle made no reply.

“Why don’t you answer me?”

“Foolish question, Number One. Yes, I have made a nice record for myself.”

“If you make yourself a nuisance around here, I shall find a way to punish you,” she threatened her.

“Go ahead. Get it all off your chest at once and then drop it.”

Mrs.Bryce decided upon injured dignity, as her best rÔle.

“Where’s Wally?” demanded Isabelle.

“I don’t know.”

“What’s doing around here? I expect to enjoy myself on this little vacation. I hope you don’t intend to be too disagreeable.”

Later at dinner Wally remarked to his wife—

“Tell her about the trip?”

“No.”

“What trip?” demanded their daughter.

“We are going off on the Abercrombie Brendons’ yacht, and your unfortunate return has forced Mrs.Brendon to include you in the party.”

“I hope you said ‘No, thanks’ for me.”

“We said ‘yes’ for you,” replied Wally.

“But I won’t go. Shut up on a boat with you two and the Brendons? Not much.”

“You’re not being consulted,” remarked her mother, coolly.

“You’ll have to drag me aboard.”

Mrs.Bryce’s temper flared.

“You will walk aboard and you will behave like a decent individual while we are on this cruise, or there will be the most serious consequences you have ever met yet. Nobody wants you on this party, you understand, and the less conspicuous you make yourself, the better.”

Isabelle beamed upon them.

“Thank you so much for your charming invitation, my dear, doting parents. I accept with pleasure, and I think I can promise you that your little outing will be a complete success, so far as I am concerned.”

She laughed lightly, and Mr.and Mrs.Bryce exchanged uneasy glances. Something in that laugh did not promise well for their holiday.

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