"Why, Leslie! What is the matter?" gasped Julia Cloud.
"Tell her!" ordered Leslie, the revolver still pointed straight at Myrtle.
"What shall I tell?" gasped the other girl, turning a white, miserable face toward Miss Cloud as if to appeal to her leniency. But there was a severity in Julia Cloud's face now after her long hours of anxiety that boded no good for the cause of all her alarm.
"Tell her the whole story!" ordered the fierce young voice of Leslie.
"Why, we went out to take a ride," began Myrtle, looking up with her old braggadocio. There had seldom been a time when Myrtle had not been able to get out of a situation by use of her wily tongue.
"Tell it all," said Leslie, looking across the barrel of her weapon. "Tell who wanted to go on that ride."
"Why, yes, I asked Leslie to take me. I--we--well, that is--I wanted to meet a friend."
"Tell it straight!" ordered Leslie.
"Why, of course I didn't tell Leslie I expected to meet them--him. I wasn't just sure he could make the arrangements. I meant to tell her when we got out. And when we met him--and my cousin--it was my cousin I was to meet--you see I'm--we--he----"
Myrtle was getting all tangled up with her glib tongue under the clear gaze of Julia Cloud's truth-compelling eyes. She looked up and down, and twisted the fringe on her sash, and turned red and white by turns, and seemed for the first time a very young, very silly child. But Leslie had suffered, and just now Leslie had no mercy. This girl had been a kind of idol to whom she had sacrificed much, and now that her idol had fallen she wanted to make the idol pay. Or no, was that it? Leslie afterwards searched her heart, and felt that she could truly say that her strongest motive in compelling this confession had been to get the burden of the knowledge of it off her own shrinking soul.
"Tell the rest!" came the relentless voice of Leslie, and Myrtle struggled on.
"Well, I'm engaged to Mr. Bartram Laws; and my guardian won't let us get married till I'm through college, and we fixed it up to get married to-day quietly. I knew it would be all right after he found out he couldn't help himself, and so----"
"Tell how you asked the boys to get in the car!" ordered the fierce voice again; and Myrtle, recalled from another attempt to pass it all off pleasantly, went step by step through the whole shameful story until it was complete.