“No, thank you,” she said, “I can not sit down.  I only stopped to tell you that I have arranged with the publishers.  They will keep the secret.  I shall have rather a hard task arranging about the checks, because I fear it will involve a little deceit and I do not like deceit.”

Annie, as she spoke, looked straight at Margaret and there was something terrible in that clear look of unsoiled truth.  Margaret put out a detaining hand.

“Sit down for a minute, please,” she said cringingly.  “I want to explain?”

“There is nothing whatever to explain,” replied Annie.  “I heard.”

“Can you ever forgive me?”

“I do not think,” said Annie, “that this is an ordinary offence about which to talk of forgiveness.  I do pity you, Margaret, for I realise how dreadfully you must have wanted what did not belong to you.”

Margaret winced.  “Well, if it is any satisfaction to you, I am realising nothing but misery from it,” she said in a low voice.

“I don’t see how you can help that,” replied Annie simply.  Then she went away.

It proved Margaret’s unflinching trust in the girl and Annie’s recognition of no possibility except that trust, that no request nor promise as to secrecy had been made.  Annie, after she got home, almost forgot the whole for a time, since her Aunt Harriet, and Aunt Harriet was the sister who was subject to rose-colds, announced her determination to call at Mr. von Rosen’s the next afternoon with Annie and see his famous collection.

“Of course,” said she, “the invitation was meant particularly for me, since I am one of his parishioners, and I think it will be improving to you, Annie, to view antiquities.”

“Yes, Aunt Harriet,” said Annie.  She was wondering if she would be allowed to wear her pale blue muslin and the turquoise necklace which was a relic of her grandmother’s girlhood.  Aunt Susan sniffed delicately.

“I will stay with Mother,” she said with a virtuous air.

The old lady, stately in her black satin, with white diamonds gleaming on her veinous hands, glanced acutely at them.  The next day, when her daughter Harriet insisted that the cross barred muslin was not too spoiled to wear to the inspection of curios, she declared that it was simply filthy, and that Annie must wear her blue, and that the little string of turquoise beads was not in the least too dressy for the occasion.

It therefore happened that Annie and her Aunt Harriet set forth at three o’clock in the afternoon, Annie in blue, and her aunt in thin black grenadine with a glitter of jet and a little black bonnet with a straight tuft of green rising from a little wobble of jet, and a black-fringed parasol tilted well over her eyes.  Annie’s charming little face was framed in a background of white parasol.  Margaret saw them pass as she sat on her verandah.  She had received more congratulatory letters that day, and the thief envied the one from whom she had taken.  Annie bowed to Margaret, and her Aunt Harriet said something about the heat, in a high shrill voice.