The Charm School
not have been true. But I said how hard it was for a parent to be stern and stand between a young couple who really loved each other. She saw what I meant. That was why she nearly fainted. You wouldn't faint, Susie, no matter who was engaged."
"Certainly not," said Susie, haughtily.
"No," her mother went on, reflectively—"no, you would just feel sulky and vindictive and insulted about it, but that, my dear child, is not love."
Susie, who was engaged in feeling all the things her mother had said, refused to answer and they drove home in absolute silence.
After they had gone Austin, finding that the lights of the school had been put out and that it was too late to hear anything more about Elise that evening, went and sat on the sea-wall and gave himself up to what he supposed was thought. As a matter of fact, he opposed nothing like a mental process to the waves of emotion that swept over him.
He went to bed late, and had hardly fallen asleep when he was wakened by the telephone from the school buildings. It was six o'clock, and Miss Curtis was telling him that Elise Benedotti had disappeared.
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