he
was silent and sulky; and in the end, crowned with her new honors, at
the point in her life she had always longed for, and never before
reached, she looked more like a girl who was ashamed of herself, than
like one whose vanity and love of praise had for the first time been
fully gratified.

She dreaded going to her room; she was afraid something to mar her
success was waiting for her there. She wished Marion Parke had never
come from the West, that Gladys had never been weak enough to take her
in for a room-mate. In short, Susan was more unhappy than she had ever
been before. Gladys, full of frolic with a large clique of girls in
another part of the room, had not given her a thought.

To have Susan write so good a story had been the same surprise to her
that it was to every one; but the reading was no sooner over, than she
had forgotten it, and if the teacher had not told her it was time she
went to her room, she would also have forgotten there was any room to
go to.

When she saw Susan she said, "Come on if you don't want to get
reported. I say, Sue, haven't we had a real jolly time?" but much to
Susan's relief not a word about "Storied West Rock."

Dorothy had been waiting for Susan, and when the gas was out and they
were all in bed, she whispered to her,--

"O Sue! I'm so glad for you." Dorothy thought a moment after she heard
a sound like a smothered sob, but Susan not answering or moving, she
concluded she had fallen quickly asleep, and that was a half snore; so
she went to sleep herself, but not without some troubled thoughts
about Marion and her unusual behavior.

When Marion and Susan met the next morning, Marion noticed that Susan
avoided her, never even looked at her; and when Dorothy and Gladys
went away to a recitation, leaving them alone, Susan hastily gathered
up her books, and going into her bedroom, shut the door.

Marion thought this over. To her it looked as if Susan felt guilty and
was afraid; but she had determined not to watch her, not even to seem
to suspect her. "How should she know that I remember the story?" she
thought, "or, indeed, that I have ever so much as read it? I will put
it off my mind; I will! I _will!_"

But, in spite of her resolutions, Marion could not; and as days went
on she took to wondering whether by thus concealing what she knew, she
was not making herself a partner in the deception.

Susan, not being at once accused by Marion, came slowly but
comfortably to t