The matron had a great deal to say. For the next ten minutes she lectured the culprits with scathing severity. "I shall recommend that you be expelled from college, Miss Seaton. Miss Gilbert, were you also a party to this affair?" "Yes," was the tranquil response, "I knew all about it. Can't say I'm very proud of it. Still, it's rather too late now for regrets." Maizie raised her unfathomable black eyes from their studied scrutiny of the floor. Quite by chance they met Jane's gray ones. Jane had a peculiar impression as of a veil that had been slowly lifted, revealing to her a Maizie Gilbert who had the possibilities of something higher than malicious mischief-making. Obeying an impulse which suddenly swayed her, she turned to the matron. "Mrs. Weatherbee," she said, "can't this affair be settled now and among ourselves? After all, no great harm has really come of it. The missing jewelry has been found, Judith has been exonerated, I still have my room, and no one except those present knows what has taken place here to-night. We are willing to forget it if you are. I am speaking for Judith and Norma. I am sure Elsie doesn't want her cousin to be expelled. Can't we blot it out and begin over again?" "I should like it to be that way," said Judith quietly. Norma nodded silent concurrence. "I'll never forgive Marian, but I'd hate to see her expelled," Elsie said, after a brief hesitation. "I don't think Maizie ought to be, either. It's not half as much her fault as Marian's." Perhaps this latest turn of the tide amazed Mrs. Weatherbee most of all. For a time she silently scanned the group of girls before her. She had not reckoned that the defense would suddenly swing about and plead for the defeated prosecution. "I cannot answer you now, Miss Allen," she gravely replied. "I can appreciate, however, your generosity of spirit. I shall ask all of you to leave me now. Later I will inform you of my decision." Each feeling that there was nothing more to be said, the six girls obediently rose to depart. Marian walked to the door, looking neither to the right nor left. Without waiting for Maizie she made a hurried exit. Maizie took her time, however. Her hand on the door knob she turned and addressed Jane. "You're a real Right Guard," she said in her slow, drawling fashion. "Not only on the team, but in everything else. I'm sorry it took me so long to find it out." CHAPTER XXVII CONCLUSION As a result of the events of the previous evening, Marian Seaton and Maizie Gilbert put in a very bad day. It began by a wild fit of weeping on Marian's part, after breakfast and in her room that morning. At breakfast she managed to keep up a semblance of her usual self-assured, arrogant manner, but the moment she reached her room she crumpled.