"Poor John! I see his second
fiasco. Lavender crystals, please!"
Eileen caught her lip in mortification. She had not intended to
say what she thought.
"Well, you can't claim," she hurried on to cover her confusion,
"that it was not an ill-bred, common trick for her to take
possession of a man of my party, and utterly ignore me. She has
everything on earth that I want; she treats me like a dog, and
she could give me a glorious time by merely nodding her head."
"I am quite sure you are mistaken," said Linda. "From what I've
heard of her, she wouldn't mistreat anyone. Very probably what
she does is merely to feel that she is not acquainted with you.
You have an unfortunate way, Eileen, of defeating your own ends.
If you wanted to attract Mary Louise Whiting, you missed the best
chance you ever could have had, at three o'clock Saturday
afternoon, when you maliciously treated her only brother as you
would a mechanic, ordered him to our garage, and shut our door in
his face."
Eileen turned to Linda. Her mouth fell open. A ghastly greenish
white flooded her face.
"What do you mean?" she gasped.
"I mean," said Linda, "that Donald Whiting was calling on me, and
you purposely sent him to the garage."
Crash down among the vanities of Eileen's dressing table went her
lovely head, and she broke into deep and violent sobs. Linda
stood looking at her a second, slowly shaking her head. Then she
turned and went to her room.
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