successful years had made possible, she was exactly like a
well-modeled India rubber figure.

Beverly was tall for a girl not yet sixteen, and as the result of having
grown up with two active healthy boys, and having done every earthly
thing which they had done, she was a living, vital bunch of energy and
well-developed muscles, and fully as strong as Athol.

Never since tiny childhood when Mammy Riah had smacked her for some
misdeed, or her mother had spanked her for some real transgression, had
hand been laid upon her excepting in a caress. That any human being could
so lose her self-control as to resort to such methods of correction she
would not have believed possible.

Then in a flash all the fighting blood of the Ashbys and Seldons boiled,
and with a cry of outraged feelings Beverly Ashby laid hold of Miss
Woodhull's flabby arms with a pair of slender muscular hands, backed her
by main force against the chair which she had so hastily vacated, and
plumped that dumbfounded lady down upon it with a force which made her
teeth crack together, as she cried indignantly:

"How dare you touch me! How dare you!"

Then with a whirl she was across the room, out of the door and up the
stairs to Study 10, which she entered like a cyclone and rushed across
into her bedroom, slamming and locking the door.

What mental processes took place behind that locked door her astonished
room-mates, who had been eagerly awaiting her return, could not even
guess, and dared not venture to inquire. Not a sound came from the room.

"What do you suppose has happened?" asked Sally breathlessly.

"Something a good deal more serious than we have any idea of. Beverly
Ashby is not the kind of girl to look or act like that without a mighty
good cause. Did you notice her face? It frightened me," was Aileen's awed
reply.

"What can we do?" asked Sally in deep distress.

"Not one single, solitary thing, and that's the very worst of it. We
don't even know what has happened," and the two girls began to prepare
for bed in a bewildered sort of way.

Meanwhile down in that perfectly appointed study a very dazed woman sat
rigid and silent. For the very first time in all her life she had
encountered a will stronger than her own, had met in the person of an
individual only a quarter of her own age a force which had literally and
figuratively swept her off her feet and set at naught a resolution which
she believed to be indomitable. And worst of all,