“Will you come home with me?” she asked.

Rosalind was talking gaily at the moment to a very young undergraduate.

“I am obliged to you,” she began; “you are kind, but I have arranged to return to St. Benet’s with Miss Day and Miss Marsh.”

“I should like you to come now with me,” persisted Maggie in a grave voice.

Something in her tone caused Rosalind to turn pale.  The sick fear, which had never been absent from her heart during the evening, became on the instant intolerable.  She turned to the young lad with whom she had been flirting, bade him a hasty and indifferent “good night” and followed Maggie out of the room.

Hammond accompanied the two girls downstairs, got their cab for them and helped them in.

After Rosalind consented to come home Miss Oliphant did not address another word to her.  Rosalind sat huddled up in a corner of the cab; Maggie kept the window open and looked out.  The clear moonlight shone on her white face and glistened on her dress.  Rosalind kept glancing at her.  The guilty girl’s terror of the silent figure by her side grew greater each moment.

The girls reached Heath Hall and Maggie again touched Rosalind on her arm.

“Come to my room,” she said; “I want to say something to you.”

Without waiting for a reply she went on herself in front.  Rosalind followed abjectly; she was shaking in every limb.

The moment Maggie closed her room door Rosalind flung her cloak off her shoulders, and, falling on her knees, caught the hem of Maggie’s dress and covered her face with it.

“Don’t, Rosalind; get up,” said Miss Oliphant in a tone of disgust.

“Oh, Maggie, Maggie, do be merciful!  Do forgive me!  Don’t send me to prison, Maggie—­ don’t!”

“Get off your knees at once, or I don’t know what I shall do,” replied Maggie.

Rosalind sprang to her feet; she crouched up against the door; her eyes were wide open.  Maggie came and, faced her.

“Oh, don’t!” said Miss Merton with a little shriek, “don’t look at me like that!” She put up her hand to her neck and began to unfasten her coral necklace.  She took it off, slipped her bracelets from her arms, took her earrings out and removed her pins.

“You can have them all,” she said, holding out the coral; “they are worth a great deal more—­ a great deal more than the money I—­ took!”

“Lay them down,” said Maggie.  “Do you think I could touch that coral?  Oh, Rosalind,” she added, a sudden rush of intense feeling coming into her voice, “I pity you!  I pity any girl who has so base a soul.”

Rosalind began to sob freely.  “You don’t know how I was tempted,” she said.  “I went through a dreadful time, and you were the cause—­ you know you were, Maggie.  You raised the price of that coral so wickedly, you excited my feelings.  I felt as if there was a fiend in me.  You did not want the sealskin jacket, but you bid against me and won it.  Then I felt mad, and, whatever you had offered for the coral, I should have bidden higher.  It was all your fault; it was you who got me into debt.  I would not be in the awful, awful plight I am in to-night but for you, Maggie.”