“She must answer.”  Miss Morris’s voice was rougher than it had ever been in Mademoiselle Duroc’s presence.  “Permit me to whip her, Mademoiselle, and make her tell.”

Mademoiselle shook her head slowly.  Her voice was like spun silk as she replied:  “If she does not answer when I speak, it is not my thought that she would answer to the rod.  Anne!” She fixed her clear, commanding eyes again on the little culprit.

“Oh, Mamzelle, don’t ask me,” sobbed Anne.  “I would tell you if I could.  I will do anything else you want me.  But I cannot—­cannot—­cannot tell.”

Mademoiselle Duroc rose, looked over Anne’s head as if she were not there, and spoke to Miss Morris.  “For the present, certainly, it is useless to persist,” she said.  “Unless Anne Lewis makes the explanation of this matter, for a month she may not go on the playground, she may not take any recreation except a walk alone in the yard, she may have double tasks in the three studies in which her grade marks are lowest.  I should send the full account of the matter to Madame Patterson and request that this child be removed from St. Cecilia’s School, were it not that Miss Drayton writes her sister is very ill.  Therefore I will wait until the visit which Miss Drayton proposes to make to the city before the holidays and then I will place this matter before her.  Anne is now excused from the room.  I do not desire to see longer that which I have not before seen—­a pupil who does not obey me.”

Neither Mademoiselle Duroc nor Miss Morris mentioned the subject and we may be sure that Anne did not, but somehow the girls got hold of enough to gossip over and misrepresent the matter.  It was whispered that Anne had a great heap of jewels and money and was being punished because she would not tell from whom she had stolen them.  Perhaps she was to be sent to prison.  Her classmates stared at her with curious, unfriendly eyes and even when she was allowed again to go on the playground, they kept away from her.  Poor little Anne was very lonely.

Several days after the jewels were discovered, Miss Morris was exceedingly cross.  It was impossible to please her, even with perfect recitations, and those Anne had, for she was studying more diligently than she had ever done—­even the hated arithmetic—­partly to occupy the long, lonely hours and partly to make up for her unwilling disobedience.  By degrees Miss Morris became less stern.  Anne ought to be punished and that severely, she thought; no pupil had ever before dared disobey Mademoiselle.  But Miss Morris hated to see a child so lonely and miserable.  She grew gentler and gentler with Anne, crosser and crosser with the other girls.  It was certainly no affair of theirs to punish a classmate for—­they knew not what.

She saw and approved that sweet-tempered little Elsie Hart smiled and nodded to Anne at every quiet chance.  Elsie would have liked to go on being friends, but that, she knew, would make the other girls angry and she prudently preferred to be on bad terms with one rather than with four.  But she always offered her Saturday bonbons to Anne as to the other girls; she couldn’t enjoy them herself if she were so mean and stingy as not to do that, she declared stoutly.