“Oh, well, then she needn’t,” finished the inconsistent blonde. “That’s not it at all,” explained Judith. “We don’t want Helen disturbed and run after by a lot of notoriety seekers.” “Certainly not,” agreed Drusilla. “Suppose they come down on us and ransack the place——” “And carry you off by mistake,” Grazia could not refrain from adding. “I always knew there was something queer about Helen,” added Minette, with undisguised banality. “Yes, that is, she was smarter than any girl you ever met,” corrected Weasie Blair. “That was the queer part of her.” “And that hateful reporter! Wait until she comes around here again snooping for news!” contributed Dorothy Blyden. “Yes, just wait!” vociferated Ted Guthrie. “At any rate,” ordered Judith. “We must see to it that every _Bugle_ is cornered on the campus. Not a line of this must by any chance come under Helen’s eyes.” “We will raid every house and sweep up every path,” volunteered Drusilla. “I love Helen Powderly and I am going to see that she has fair play.” “Bravo!” chorused the girls, now scattering at the call of the gong sounding the one thirty session. Still one more scene, important to our story, is being enacted at Wellington. Helen, in her solitary room, is quivering with suppressed excitement. She has had a letter from Stanislaus—her friend and her protector. He has, at last, found she is alive, and at Wellington College. And his letter came to the girl, who is truly in hiding, through their mutual friend, Alice Mahon, a social service worker of New York City. “Dear, dear friend!” sighed Helen happily. “How very soon I may tell my dear Jane and Judith who you are! Very soon I may throw off my cloak of disguise. I, Helka Podonsky, so long in the servitude of dishonest captors.” Once more she read the brief note penned in Polish. How much those few precious words meant to her! “Just a little while more,” she sighed, folding the note as if it might escape from her holding. “Just until Stanislaus comes.” And that afternoon Helen Powderly appeared at her class, smiling and happy, all unconscious of the _Bugle_ and its baneful story. CHAPTER XXVIII—MADAM NALASKY The promised long waits, in the offices and parlors of musical talent had descended upon Mrs. Weatherbee and Jane. It having been impossible to make an appointment for his interviews, the director was accepting the situation philosophically, but it was trying, and all but exhausting. “You see, my dear,” she explained to Jane, “by seeing them personally, we have a chance to solicit their interest in our college, and some of these singers are the daughters of former students. That gives us an opening. This lady we are now waiting for is a stranger, but if we can obtain her promise to sing for us, our concert will be an assured success. She is the rage of the season, and a wonderful concert soprano.”