Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER III ANOTHER LETTER AND WHAT FOLLOWED IT SUZANNE, her letter crumpled in her hand, had gone directly to her own room. There she read it for the second time, its baleful import sinking deeper into her consciousness with every sentence. It was in typewriting and bore the Berkeley postmark: "deak Mbs. Paid: This is just a line to give your memory and your conscience a jog. Your bridge debts are accumulating. Also, I hear, there are dressmakers and milliners in town who are growing restive. If there was insufficient means 1 wouldn't bother you, but any one who dresses and spends as you do hasn't that excuse. Perhaps you don't know what is being said and felt. Believe me you wouldn't like it; neither would Mrs. Janney. It is for her sake that I am warning you. I don't want to see her hurt and humiliated as she would be if this comes out in The Eaveidropptr, and it will unless you act quickly. ' There's a chiel among you takin notes' and that chiel's had a line on you for some time. So take these words to heart and as the boys say, ' Come across.' A Friekd." Ever since the opening of the season the summer colony of which Berkeley was the hub had been the subject of paragraphs — more or less scandalous — appearing in The Eavesdropper. The paper, a scurrilousweekly, had evidently some inside informer, for most of the disclosures were true and could only have been obtained by a member of the community. Suzanne, whose debts would make racy reading, had quaked every time she opened it. So far she had been spared, and she had hoped to escape by a gradual clearing off of her obligations. But she had not been able to do it — unforeseen things had happened. And now the dreaded had come to pass — she would be written up in The Eavesdropper. Though her allowance had bee... --This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.