“I demand to know who screamed,” she repeated.

Amelia spoke sheepishly.  “I was so sound asleep,” she said.  “And then I waked up.  I can’t help being ’fraid of ghosts and burglars and things.  I saw—­it’s Anne—­but I didn’t know.  I just saw something between me and the window, and the hand went up and down—­up and down.  It frightened me.  I screamed.”

“It is the misfortune to be a so fearful coward,” commented Mademoiselle, dryly.  “And you, Anne Lewis, you also are due to explain.”

Anne sat pale and wordless.

“You will have the goodness to give me those things from your pillow which belong not there,” said Mademoiselle, taking possession of them.  “Now you will please to put on your slippers and your dressing-gown, and we will have the interview in my room.  This dormitory needs no more disturbance.  I commend you to sleep, young ladies.  I suggest, Amelia, that you cultivate repose and courage.”

Anne entered Mademoiselle Duroc’s room with one thought in her bewildered brain.  “I must not tell.  I must not tell,” she said over and over to herself.  She stood with downcast eyes before Mademoiselle Duroc who examined the trinkets one after another.

“These rings are, I judge, of considerable value,” she said.  “This is an exquisite little ruby.  The locket is quaintly enamelled.  The miniature is of masterful workmanship; whose portrait is it?” she asked, raising her eyes to Anne’s frightened face.

Anne shook her head.  Her voice failed her.  And she did not know that the stately old gentleman was her mother’s grandfather.

“And you so disregard the rules as to have jewels in your open box—­and money of this value,” continued Mademoiselle, emptying the coins out of the bead purse and putting her finger on the gold piece.

“Is that money?” asked Anne, in amazement.

Mademoiselle looked up.  “Do you mean to tell me that you were unaware that this is a twenty-dollar coin?” she asked.

“I never thought,” answered Anne.  “Of course I ought to have known.  It was stupid.  But I had never seen gold money before.”

“Where did you get it?” demanded Mademoiselle.  “And the other things?”

It was the question that Anne dreaded.

“I cannot tell you, Mamzelle,” she answered, in a low voice.

“Anne!  I demand to know whose things these are,” said Mademoiselle, in her most awful voice.

“Mine, mine,” cried Anne.  “But I cannot tell you about them, Mamzelle.  Indeed I cannot—­not if you kill me.  I promised.  I promised.”

In vain did Mademoiselle Duroc question.  At last she dismissed Anne who crept back to bed, and, holding Honey-Sweet tight, sobbed herself to sleep.

CHAPTER X

The next morning Anne was summoned to the office; there she was coaxed and threatened by Miss Morris and questioned keenly by Mademoiselle Duroc.  All to no purpose.  She said in breathless whispers that she didn’t mean to be disobedient, she didn’t want to refuse to answer, but she could not, could not tell anything about the jewels.  She confessed that Miss Drayton and Mrs. Patterson did not know that she had them.