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--_révoltée_, 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?"
"Don't equivocate! You _threw_ it"--sternly.
"To wake up the class. If you knew how dull that hour is you wouldn't blame me."
"Miss Marshall is a fool. If you ask her a question outside the lesson she has to look it up in the book."
"You are not here to criticize your teachers, you are here to account for your misbehaviour."
"I am telling you why I misbehave. I can't listen to her. Nobody does. She sets us all wild. Everybody was half asleep so I bounced the lamp on the floor. She ought to have been grateful to me for getting their attention."
"This is the second time this week that you have been reported for insubordination. This conduct cannot continue. I am writing your parents to-day that unless you mend your ways, they must take you away from here. You are contaminating the entire school."
Miss Vantine thought best to ignore this impertinence.
"You will take twenty demerits, and miss your walk in the park for a week. You may go now."
The girl sauntered insolently out of the room, leaving Miss Vantine white with rage. She wrote a very firm letter to Mrs. Walter Bryce, who in turn wrote a denunciatory letter to her daughter, and there the matter rested.