owned and worn by Eleanor Hubert, and if she were out sauntering
amorously in the twilight, with whom could she be but Jerry
Fiske,--and that meant--Sylvia's pangs of conscience about supplanting
Eleanor were swept away by a flood of anger as at a defeat. She could
not make out the girl's companion, beyond the fact that he was tall
and wore a long, loose overcoat. Jerry was tall and wore a long, loose
overcoat. Sylvia walked on, slowly now, thoroughly aroused, quite
unaware of the inconsistency of her mental attitude. She felt a rising
tide of heat. She had, she told herself, half a notion to step forward
and announce her presence to the couple, whose pace as the Hubert
house was approached became slower and slower.

But then, as they stood for a moment at the entrance of the Hubert
driveway, the arc-lights blazed up all over the campus at once and she
saw two things: one was that Eleanor was walking very close to her
companion, with her arm through his, and her little gloved fingers
covered by his hand, and next that he was not Jerry Fiske at all,
but the queer, countrified "freak" assistant in chemistry with
whom Eleanor, since Jerry's defection, had more or less masked her
abandonment.

At the same moment the two started guiltily apart, and Sylvia halted,
thinking they had discovered her. But it was Mrs. Hubert whom they had
seen, advancing from the other direction, and making no pretense that
she was not in search of an absent daughter. She bore down upon the
couple, murmured a very brief greeting to the man, accompanied by a
faint inclination of her well-hatted head, drew Eleanor's unresisting
hand inside her arm, and walked her briskly into the house.

CHAPTER XVII

MRS. MARSHALL STICKS TO HER PRINCIPLES

During the autumn and early winter it not only happened unfortunately
that the quartet played altogether too much Haydn, but that Sylvia's
father, contrary to his usual custom, was away from home a great deal.
The State University had arrived at that stage of its career when, if
its rapidly increasing needs and demands for State money were to be
recognized by the Legislature, it must knit itself more closely to
the rest of the State system of education, have a more intimate
affiliation with the widely scattered public high schools, and weld
into some sort of homegeneity their extremely various standards of
scholarship. This was a delicate undertaking, calling for much tact
and an accurate knowledge