Isabelle realized that the talk of these girls was false and ugly. She said so; and the result was that she was excluded from the intimacy of the leading group. In her letters to Mrs. Benjamin she poured out her whole heart. Protest, misery, loneliness; Mrs. Benjamin sensed them all in the poignant letters the girl sent her. She replied with long, intimate chapters of encouragement and understanding. It was her counsel which kept Isabelle going the first six months of this experience. She tried with all her might to carry into her daily life the ideals taught and lived at Hill Top. But she seemed to be speaking a language that nobody understood. Her teachers bored her. She found she could keep ahead in her classes with only the most perfunctory study, so the ideal of a high standard for work was the first to go. What was the use? There was not enough to occupy her, so the old restlessness came upon her, with mischievous uses for her excess vitality. She gained a reputation as a law breaker, and she was watched and punished with increasing frequency. Her old leadership in misbehaviour was once more established. The precocious cynicism of her associates began to impress her as clever. She outdid them at it. Mrs. Benjamin's friendship was her only hope of salvation now. And then, in January, after a brief spell of pneumonia, dear Mrs. Benjamin left the world she had so graced, leaving an aching vacancy behind for her husband and her friends. To Isabelle it came as her first real sorrow. For weeks after, the girl retired into herself as into a locked room. She could not eat; she did not sleep; she grew thin, and haggard, and pale. Worse than that; in her rebellion at this loss, she grew bitter. She threw this suffering at the feet of God with a threat. She felt herself the victim of eternal injustice. Just as she achieved happiness, or friendship, it was always snatched from her. Always, before, Max had cheated her of things; now it was God. She came out of it the Isabelle of her early childhood--_revoltee_, enemy to authority, defier of God and the universe. Her wit against them all. She would take what she wanted now, and let them look out for her! * * * * * From that time on, she was the acknowledged school "terror." She put her entire mind upon misbehaving, and she was as ingenious as a monkey. Never a week passed that she was not shut up for an hour in the library with Miss Vantine, who always felt, poor lady, that she was dealing with a manifestation of the devil. "Did you, or did you not throw an electric lamp on the floor during the algebra lesson, Isabelle?" "I _dropped_ one on the floor." "Don't equivocate! You _threw_ it"--sternly. "All right; I threw it"--defiantly. "Why did you do it?" "To wake up the class. If you knew how dull that hour is you wouldn't blame me." "Don't be impertinent!"