ade 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.

One afternoon--Anne was looking especially dejected as she took her
lonely walk in the west yard--Miss Morris thrust into Elsie's hands a
bag of candies and whispered hurriedly: "When you go to divide--yonder
is A