“How can I tell you?” sobbed Marian.  “Grace, I am a thief and may have to go to prison.”

“A thief!” echoed Grace.  “Nonsense, Marian.  I don’t believe you would steal a penny.”

“But I am,” persisted Marian tearfully.  “I stole the class money, and it’s all gone.”

She began to sob again.

Grace let Marian finish her cry before interrogating her further.  She wanted time to think.  Her mind hastily reviewed the two conversations she had overheard between Marian and Henry Hammond.  This, then, was the meaning of it all.  The brief suspicion that had flashed into her mind and Anne’s on the night that Marian and Henry Hammond had passed them, had been only too well founded.  Marian had drawn the money from the bank and given it to him.

“Marian,” asked Grace, “did you give the money the judge sent us to Henry Hammond?”

Marian nodded, too overcome as yet to speak.

“Can’t you tell me about it?” continued Grace patiently.

Marian struggled for self-control, then began in a shaking voice.

“I have been a perfect idiot over that miserable Henry Hammond, and I deserve everything.  I was not satisfied with being a schoolgirl, but thought it very smart to put up my hair and make a general goose of myself.

“It all began the night of the bazaar.  I had no business to pay any attention to that man.  He is really very clever, for before I realized what I had said I had told him all about our sorority and about being class treasurer, and a lot of things that were none of his business.

“After the bazaar I saw him often and told him about the judge’s check.

“One day he asked me if I had any friends who had money that they would like to double.  I had fifty dollars of my own that I had been saving for ever so long, and told him about it.  He said that he manipulated stocks a little (whatever that is) in connection with his real estate business.  He asked me to give him the money and let him prove to me how easily he could double it.  I did, and he brought me back one hundred dollars.

“Of course, I was delighted.  Then mother sent me fifty dollars for Christmas, and I bought all those presents.  It took every cent I had, and I was awfully silly, for no one cared as much for them as if they’d been pretty little gifts that I made myself.  That was my first folly.

“The next was those three gowns.  They haven’t been paid for yet.  I haven’t dared give father the bills, and I can never face mother.  She would never have allowed me to order anything like them.  Well, you know how badly I behaved at the house party, and how nice you all were to me, even when I was so hateful.

“On New Year’s Night, when we were coming from Nesbits, Henry Hammond asked me for the class money.  He said he had a chance to treble it, and that it was too good an opportunity to be lost.