ee minutes of one o'clock when you drove
away. Nita, Lois--do you mind if I use the names I am most accustomed
to?... Thank you!--and I went immediately into the lounge of Breakaway
Inn, where we found Carolyn Drake and Flora Miles waiting for us. Nita
soon left us to see about the arrangement of the table, and while she
was away the rest of the girls arrived."

"Except--" a woman's voice broke in.

"I was going to say all eight of us were ready for lunch except Polly
Beale. She hadn't come," Penny went on, her husky voice a little sharp
with annoyance. "When Nita came to ask us into the private dining room,
one of the Inn's employees came and told her there was a call for her
and showed her to the private booth in the lounge. In a minute Nita
returned and told us that Polly wasn't coming to the luncheon, but would
join us later for bridge here."

"Why don't you tell him how funny Nita acted?" Janet Raymond prompted.

Penny flushed, but she accepted the prompting. "I think any of us might
have been a little--annoyed," she said steadily, as if striving to be
utterly truthful. "Nita told us--" she turned to Dundee, whose pencil
was flying, "that Polly had made no excuse at all; in fact, she quoted
Polly exactly: 'Sorry, Nita. Can't make it for lunch. I'll show up at
your place at 2:30 for bridge.'"

"Nita couldn't bear the least hint of being slighted," Janet Raymond
explained, with a malicious gleam in her pale blue eyes. "If it hadn't
been for Lois and Hugo--Judge Marshall, I mean--Nita Selim would never
have been included in any of our affairs--and she _knew_ it! The Dunlaps
can do anything they please, because they're--"

"Please, Janet!" Lois Dunlap cut in, her usually placid voice becoming
quite sharp. "You must know by this time that I make friends wherever I
please, and that I liked--yes, I was _extremely_ fond of poor little
Nita. In fact, I am forced to believe that, of all the women she met in
this town, I was her only real friend."

There was a flush of anger on her lovably plain face as her grey eyes
challenged first one and then another of the "Forsyte girls." One or two
looked a little ashamed, but there was not a single voice to contradict
Lois Dunlap's flat assertion.

"Will you please go on, Pen--Miss Crain?" Dundee urged, but he had
missed nothing of the little by-play.

"I wish you would call me Penny so I'd feel more like a person than a
witness," Penny retorted thornily. "Where was I?... Oh