‘I wonder what it can be,’ mused Aunt Ada.

‘I shall go and find out!’ said Gillian, jumping up, as she heard a door shut upstairs.

‘No, don’t,’ said Aunt Ada, ‘you had much better not interfere.’

‘It is my business to see after my own sister,’ returned Gillian haughtily.

‘I see what you mean, my dear,’ said her aunt, stretching out her hand, kindly; ’but I do not think you can do any good.  If she is in a scrape, you have nothing to do with the High School management, and for you to burst in would only annoy Miss Leverett and confuse the affair.  Oh, I know your impulse of defence, dear Gillian; but the time has not come yet, and you can’t have any reasonable doubt that Jane will be just, nor that your mother would wish that you should be quiet about it.’

‘But suppose there is some horrid accusation against her!’ said Gillian hotly.

’But, dear child, if you don’t know anything about it, how can you defend her?’

‘I ought to know!’

’So you will in time; but the more people there are present, the more confusion there is, and the greater difficulty in getting at the rights of anything.’’

More by her caressing tone of sympathy than by actual arguments, Adeline did succeed in keeping Gillian in the drawing-room, though not in pacifying her, till doors were heard again, and something so like Valetta crying as she went upstairs, that Gillian was neither to have nor to hold, and made a dash out of the room, only to find her aunt and the head-mistress exchanging last words in the hall, and as she was going to brush past them, Aunt Jane caught her hand, and said—–­

‘Wait a moment, Gillian; I want to speak to you.’

There was no getting away, but she was very indignant.  She tugged at her aunt’s hand more than perhaps she knew, and there was something of a flouncing as she flung into the drawing-room and demanded—–­

‘Well, what have you been doing to poor little Val?’

‘We have done nothing,’ said Miss Mohun quietly.  ’Miss Leverett wanted to ask her some questions.  Sit down, Gillian.  You had better hear what I have to say before going to her.  Well, it appears that there has been some amount of cribbing in the third form.’

‘I’m sure Val never would,’ broke out Gillian.  And her aunt answered—–­

‘So was I; but—–­’

‘Oh—–­’

‘My dear, do hush,’ pleaded Adeline.  ‘You must let yourself listen.’

Gillian gave a desperate twist, but let her aunt smooth her hand.

’All the class—–­almost—–­seem to have done it in some telegraphic way, hard to understand,’ proceeded Aunt Jane.  ’There must have been some stupidity on the part of the class-mistress, Miss Mellon, or it could not have gone on; but there has of late been a strong suspicion of cribbing in Caesar in Valetta’s class.  They had got rather behindhand, and have been working up somewhat too hard and fast to get through the portion for examination.  Some of them translated too well—­used terms for the idioms that were neither literal, nor could have been forged by their small brains; so there was an examination, and Georgie Purvis was detected reading off from the marks on the margin of her notebook.’