ired 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
perf