“Whoever she may be, she comes from afar,” informed Leila shrewdly. “Her traveling bag is English, via Paris. She has the bored air of the English, but, set me down in the streets of Paris, and I’ll soon be at the shop which furnished her hat and coat. If it is not one in the Rue de la Pais called L’harmonie, then I am no witch woman. The latest color plates they sent me show a coat like that gray.”
“Perhaps she is a friend of Miss Remson’s,” was Kathie’s suggestion.
As the five had not heard the brief exchange of words between the stranger and the manager they impersonally concurred with Kathie. Again hustled into the roadster by Vera they soon dropped the subject of the beautiful arrival at the Hall for the more personal one of Miss Susanna’s gracious and unlooked-for help in the dormitory project.
Meanwhile, at Wayland Hall, Miss Monroe of London and Paris was lounging gracefully in a roomy willow rocker in the living room. She was appraising her surroundings through two limpid, but distinctly shrewd blue-green eyes and mentally ticketing them “not half bad.”
In her office Miss Remson was frowning as she industriously consulted her letter file for the desired correspondence. The perturbed manager was very certain that she had not agreed to admit Miss Monroe, or any other strange young woman, to Wayland Hall in the middle of the summer.
She gave a kind of annoyed cluck as she finally found the desired correspondence between herself and the newcomer’s father, who had signed his letters, “Herbert Cecil Monroe.” They had been written from a Paris address and had been accompanied by satisfactory references. In them, however, her permission had not been asked, nor had she agreed to admit the daughter of her correspondent to Wayland Hall before the formal opening of Hamilton College.
“Where is she, Jonas?” Marjorie raised a cautioning finger. She hardly breathed the question for fear of Miss Susanna’s proximity.
“She’s up in Mr. Brooke’s study, Miss Marjorie,” Jonas replied in equally guarded tones. Miss Susanna’s faithful retainer of years, the old man stood the center of the group of charming youthful visitors. He was smiling his vivid, crinkled smile as though he was thoroughly enjoying the invasion.