"It's outrageous, Barbara, for all your talk! We're
responsible! We ought to shut her up under lock and key--"
"So _many_ girls have been deterred from a mistake by being shut up
under lock and key!" commented Mrs. Marshall, with an ironical accent.
"But, good Heavens! Think of her going to that old scoundrel's--how
can I look people in the face, when they all know my opinion of
him--how I've opposed his being a Trustee and--"
"_Ah_,--!" remarked his wife significantly, "that's the trouble, is
it?"
Professor Marshall flushed, and for a moment made no rejoinder. Then,
shifting his ground, he said bitterly: "I think you're forgetting that
I've had a disillusionizing experience in this sort of thing which you
were spared. You forget that Sylvia is closely related to my sister."
"I don't forget that--but I don't forget either that Sylvia has had
a very different sort of early life from poor Victoria's. She has
breathed pure air always--I trust her to recognize its opposite."
He made an impatient gesture of exasperation. "But she'll be _in_
it--it'll be too late--"
"It's never too late." She spoke quickly, but her unwavering
opposition began to have in it a note of tension.
"She'll be caught--she'll have to go on because it'll be too hard to
get out--"
"The same vigor that makes her resist us now will give her strength
then--she's not Eleanor Hubert.
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