Bernice was utterly unprepared for anything in the nature of a clash. Marjorie did her work very coldly and succinctly in three sentences.

This quote occurs three days before Bernice is scheduled to return home. Marjorie is aware that people are talking about Warren’s courtship of Bernice, and she is unwilling to cede his attention to her cousin. She has laughed along with others as they make comments about Warren’s previous infatuation with Marjorie, which she seems to enjoy and disdain in equal measure. In a sense, Marjorie has built the current version of Bernice, and she knows how to destroy her just as easily. Though Bernice will soon be gone, the memory of her success in turning Warren’s eye away from Marjorie will live on as legend. In this moment, Marjorie reveals the true shiftiness of her nature as she turns on Bernice and begins to cut down what she has previously built up.

Bernice did not fully realize the outrageous trap that had been set for her until she met her aunt’s gaze just before dinner.

On her final night in the Harvey household, Bernice has finally started to comprehend Marjorie’s devious nature and the true cruelty she has enacted in pushing Bernice to cut her hair. Bernice’s naiveté and inexperience with the social norms of the party scene have caused her to miss one detail that Marjorie has kept close all along: Mrs. Deyo, social magnate and hostess of an important dance they will attend, has made a public stance on bobbed hair as an abomination of womanhood. As she absorbs the gravity of this detail, Bernice also now understands that her cousin, whom she has trusted, has designed to ruin her.