Virginia Swain

[from inner flap dust jacket] Linda Waldron, eighteen-year-old slavey in a small town hotel, enlists the sympathies of Simon Whitlock, a man of substance. When Whitlock's daughter is killed, just on the eve of entering college, Whitlock turns over her wardrobe and allowance to Linda, to make "the finest possible person" of herself.

She enters the enchanted life of the university campus eager for the gayety she has never had. But out of the life she has left, an old enemy trackers her down, spreading a rumor that the friendship between her and Whitlock is less platonic than it seems.

In the struggle against this enemy, she finds Thomas Moonlight Maugham, poseur and campus playboy, her staunchest champion. But she refuses to give him her complete confidence, and after a bitter quarrel with him, flings herself into an escapade with an outlaw fraternity at an abandoned house that leads to her arrest for murder.

The efforts of Tom and the discovery of the old house's secret not only open a way out of the murder tangle for her, but also strike the final blow at the man who has been slandering her.