That night in her pretty chintz-hung bedroom in the beautiful Rogers house, which was one of the show places of West Haven, Belle Rogers planned her revenge. Her temples were throbbing and her whole body ached with exhaustion. Tempers are really quite as devastating to the system as the West Indian tornadoes are to the country over which they sweep.
“I’ll get even with that rough tom-boy,” she said out loud. “I’ll pay her back if it takes all winter to do it. I’ll make her sorry she ever came to West Haven, and I’ll make the others pay, too. They’ll see what it means to interfere with me and my plans. Perhaps papa will give me a motor car, only I’m afraid of the things, and I never could run one. My hands are much too small and delicate to handle machinery.”
“Belle, darling, do you feel any better?” asked Mrs. Rogers, anxiously, outside the door.
Belle made no reply. It was her custom to pretend to be asleep when she wished to be alone, and she wished now to spend a long uninterrupted evening to herself, for her thoughts were very busy. A plan had come into her head. It had sprung up suddenly, full-grown, as if it had been secretly hatching in the bottom of her mind for a long time and now appeared a matured scheme.
Her blood tingled at the notion. It was such an audacious, daring thing that the very thought made her dizzy.
“I’ll do it,” she said at last, her mind made up. “I’ll do it, and I’ll get only one person to help me, because it will take two to work it. Now, who shall that person be? It would be best to ask a Blue Bird, but which one?”
Her thoughts ran over the girls in the despised society, but there was only one of the ten whom she would quite dare to approach. The others were fiercely loyal to each other.
This possible traitor was a new girl in West Haven. Her name was Francesca Alta, but her friends called her Fannie. She was the daughter of Mme. Alta, a music teacher lately established in the town. Many of the girls were taking music lessons of Mme. Alta, and Belle, who was one of her pupils, often had opportunities of speaking to the little dark-haired daughter, although she had only nodded to her coldly so far.
“I will speak to her to-morrow,” she exclaimed, as she swallowed the sleeping powder her indulgent mother always gave her after one of these violent headaches.