CHAPTER VIII.

A RETURN TO A FORBIDDEN LAND

“Leslie, is it really you? I’d been wondering why you hadn’t answered my letter. I wrote you soon after I received your note.” Doris Monroe’s indifferent drawl was not in evidence as she answered the telephone. She was surprised and more pleased than she had thought she could possibly be to hear Leslie Cairns’ voice on the wire. Leslie’s arrival in Hamilton meant an immediate brightening of the bored existence Doris had been leading since her return from New York.

“I wrote you I’d surely be here in April,” Leslie brusquely reminded, “and here I am.”

“I’m _awfully_ glad of it.” Doris spoke with pleasing sincerity. “Is Mrs. Gaylord with you?”

“Ye-es.” Leslie drawled the affirmation with exaggerated weariness. “How she does wish she wasn’t. She nearly had a conniption when I told her we were going to make a flying trip to Hamilton. I’ll meet you at the Colonial at four this P. M. You’ll hear more of my history then. Bye.” Leslie was gone.

Doris’s beautiful face was a study as she turned from the telephone. She was a trifle amazed at her distinct pleasure in Leslie’s unexpected arrival at Hamilton. Leslie had been so moodily unbearable after their return from the holiday vacation which they had spent in New York, Doris had felt relieved at the former’s sudden disappearance from Hamilton and the subsequent receipt of Leslie’s brief note from New York.

It was only recently that she had begun to miss Leslie and wish for her society. In spite of her ugly moods Leslie was possessed of an originality which Doris found singularly enlivening. No one could say more oddly funny things than Leslie when she chose to be humorous. Leslie never hesitated to pay extravagantly for whatever she happened to want. Doris admired in her what she considered Leslie’s “adventurous spirit.” She had been brought up to know her father’s explorer friends. They were hardy, intrepid world wanderers of daring. She had listened to their tales of reckless adventuring into the unknown and gloried in the doings of these splendid captains of adventure. There were occasions when it appeared to her that Leslie showed something of the same adventurous, undaunted spirit.

As a matter of truth, Leslie was animated by this very spirit. She had directed it, however, into ignoble channels. What she chose to regard as strategy and daring were nothing other than trickery and lawlessness.

Doris knew little or nothing of Leslie’s flagrant offenses as a student at Hamilton College. She had learned of the latter’s expellment from college from Leslie herself. She had consequently never heard the rights of the affair. She had heard vague stories concerning it from Julia Peyton, Clara Carter and one or two juniors. The knowledge of Leslie’s immense wealth had hampered even their gossip about the ex-student. The freshmen and the sophomores, who were Doris’s chief companions, had entered Hamilton too late to be on the campus at the period before Leslie’s and her chums’ expulsion from college. They, therefore, knew not much about her.

The present junior and senior classes had been respectively the freshman and sophomore classes during Leslie’s senior year at Hamilton, which had been also the year of her expulsion from college. At that particular time the attitude of the two lower classes had been one of horrified disapproval of the seventeen San Soucians who had been expelled from Hamliton for hazing a student. That was almost as much as any of them had ever learned about the affair. The girls who knew the disagreeable truth were Marjorie Dean and her intimates. Silence with them was honor. They knew a great many other derogatory facts about Leslie Cairns and her methods which they kept strictly sub rosa.

Doris was ready to welcome Leslie with warmth. She sorely lacked companions of interest. She had begun to grow bored to satiety by admiration. The freshies’ and sophs’ adoration for her was too superficial to be satisfying. They enjoyed rushing the college beauty. Each class liked to parade her on the campus and fête her at Baretti’s, the Colonial or at their pet Hamilton tea shops as a triumphant class trophy. She was selfish, but not shallow; indifferent, but not vapid. It was in her composition to give as well as receive. Because she had been surfeited with adulation she had lately experienced a vague unrestful desire to turn from the knowledge of her own charms to an admiration of some one else.

First among the students of Hamilton she admired Leila Harper. Robin Page was her second “crush.” Muriel made a third in a trio which had won her difficult fancy. None of these, however, were likely to become her friends. She would never make overtures to them. She was confident that they would never make further friendly advances to her.

Such a state of mind on her part augured a hearty welcome for Leslie. Doris hurried to her room after her last afternoon class, hastily got into the new fawn English walking suit, recently arrived from a Bond Street shop, and made a buoyant exit from the Hall and to the garage for the white car. It was a clear, sunshiny day. She thought Leslie might like to take a ride in the Dazzler. Leslie had probably hired a taxicab in which to come from town to the Colonial.

It was a very short distance from the garage to the Colonial. Arrived there, Doris saw a solitary car parked in front of the restaurant. It was a black roadster of newest type and most expensive make. She jumped to an instant conclusion that it must belong to Leslie.

Doris parked the Dazzler behind the roadster and went into the tea room to meet Leslie. She found her seated at one of the several square mission oak tables engaged in a languid perusal of a menu card.

“How are you, Goldie? Have a seat at the table and a bite with yours truly.” Leslie waved Doris into the chair opposite her. Then she stretched an arm lazily across the table and offered Doris her hand.

“Very well, thank you, Leslie. How have you been getting along?” Doris returned, with only a shade of her usual drawl. “I _am_ glad to see you. I have missed you.”

“A good miss.” Leslie shrugged an accompaniment to her laconic comment. “Were you surprised to hear me on the ’phone?”

“Of course. I was surprised when you wrote me from New York. I had no idea you had left Hamilton. I was afraid of being conditioned in math. I was studying like mad and hadn’t time just then to call you on the telephone at the hotel. I knew you were very busy.” So far as she went Doris was truthful.

“Oh, forget it. I believe what you say, Goldie, but you might have added that you were all fed up with me. I know I had a beastly grouch after the New York trip. It had teeth and claws. I had business trouble. That sneaking carpenter who is trying to swing the dormitory job for Bean and her precious Beanstalks coaxed all my men over to the Beggar Ranch. He told them a lot of fairy stories, I suppose. Anyway, I had to send for one of my father’s best men, an Italian financier, who understands Italian peasants. Even he couldn’t undo the mischief that scamp, Graham, had done.

“I finally had to send for my father. He fired the whole shooting match. I’m done with that garage flivver. My father said it wouldn’t pay me very well in the end. He was sore at me for wasting my time around this burg. He tried to make me promise I’d go to New York and never think about Hamilton again. He can’t stand the college since the precious Board gave me such an unfair deal.”

“Why, that’s dreadful, Leslie; about your garage I mean.” Doris had a certain amount of sympathy for Leslie. She was not specially interested in business, but she decided that Leslie had been badly treated.

“I’ll say it is,” Leslie made grim response. “Oh, never mind. I’m still worth a few dollars. Did you see my new car out in front?”

“Yes—I had an idea that car must belong to you. It suggested you to me at first sight.” Doris smiled across the table at her returned friend. “I had no idea you’d have a car. I brought the Dazzler on purpose. I thought we might like to take a ride.”

“Gaylord and I came here from New York in that car,” Leslie informed with an inflection of pride. “My father doesn’t know I’m here. He sailed for Europe last Thursday. I know positively that he went, too. I was at the dock and saw his steamer cut loose from Manhattan.”

“Were you?” Doris exhibited her usual polite reticence regarding Leslie’s father. Long since she had discovered that Leslie did not like to answer questions about him. “It is rather a long drive from New York, isn’t it. Your motor coat and hat are chic.”

“So is your suit. I suppose it floated straight across the pond to you. My coat came from the Clayham, in New York. But it’s some bang-up English shop, now let me tell you.” Leslie showed brightening satisfaction of her own greenish-gray motor coat and round hat of the same material.

Leslie’s own remarks about her father were “fairy stories” so far as her having seen him entered into them. She had not seen him, nor had she received any letters from him other than the peremptory one in which he had scathingly reprimanded her and ordered her to New York. Nevertheless she _had_ seen him sail for Europe in the “_Arcadia_,” though he had not known of her presence on the dock when the steamer cleared.

She had gone to the dock in a cheap tan rain-coat, a red worsted Tam o’Shanter cap and a pair of shell-rimmed glasses. Mingling with the crowd on the dock she was confident her disguise was effective. Her father’s manager, Mr. Carrington, had furnished her with the information of the date and hour of her father’s departure for Europe. She had not seen him since the day when she had called at her father’s offices. Neither had he seen her father for more than a few minutes at a time during which no mention of Leslie had been made. He had been led by her to believe that she had planned a pleasant steamer surprise for her father. He had therefore kept his own counsel and his promise to Leslie. He had sent her a note to the Essenden which had been duly forwarded to her new address.

“I should think you’d rather be in New York than here.” Doris gave a half envious sigh. “There’s nothing here of interest off the campus.”

“Oh, I had to come here while Peter the Great was away.” Leslie volunteered this much of an explanation of her visit. “I must get a line on what was done on the garage so I’ll know just how much money I put into it. My father will want to know that right off the bat if he offers it for sale as it stands. You and I will have some bully rides and drives while I’m here, Goldie. I shan’t be such a grouch as I was right after Christmas. How are things at the knowledge shop? How is Bean? Had any fusses with her or her Beanstalks lately?” Leslie’s expression grew lowering as she mentioned Marjorie.

“Miss Dean and Miss Macy aren’t at Wayland Hall now. They’re staying at Hamilton Arms. I don’t know whether they are coming back to the Hall again or not.” Doris had expected the information might elicit surprise from her companion. She smiled in faint amusement of Leslie’s astonished features, then added the crowning bit of news. “Miss Dean was chosen by Miss Hamilton to write Brooke Hamilton’s biography.”