The fact was this: Mrs. Willis' judgment and reason had been brought
round by Mr. Everard's words, but in her heart of hearts, almost unknown
to herself, there still lingered a doubt of the innocence of her wayward
and pretty pupil. She said over and over to herself that she really now
quite believed in Annie Forest, but then would come those whisperings
from her pained and sore heart.

"Why did she ever make a caricature of one who has been as a mother to
her? If she made one caricature, could she not make another? Above all
things, if _she_ did not do it, who did?"

Mrs. Willis turned away from these unpleasant whispers--she would not let
them stay with her, and turned a deaf ear to their ugly words. She had
publicly declared in the school her belief in Annie's absolute innocence,
but at the moment when her pupil looked up at her with a world of love
and adoration in her gaze, she found to her own infinite distress that
she could not give her the old love.

Annie went back to her companions, and bent her head over her lessons,
and tried to believe that she was very thankful and very happy, and Cecil
Temple managed to whisper a gentle word of congratulation to her, and at
the twelve o'clock walk Annie perceived that a few of her schoolfellows
looked at her with friendly eyes again. She perceived now that when she
went into the play-room she was not absolutely tabooed, and that, if she
chose, she might speedily resume her old reign of popularity. Annie had,
to a remarkable extent, the gift of inspiring love, and her old favorites
would quickly have flocked back to their sovereign had she so willed it.
It is certainly true that the girls to whom the whole story was known in
all its bearings found it difficult to understand how Annie could be
innocent; but Mr. Everard's and Mrs. Willis' assertions were too potent
to be disregarded, and most of the girls were only too willing to let the
whole affair slide from their minds, and to take back their favorite
Annie to their hearts again.

Annie, however, herself did not so will it. In the play-room she
fraternized with the little ones who were alike her friends in adversity
and sunshine; she rejected almost coldly the overtures of her old
favorites, but played, and romped, and was merry with the children of the
sixth class. She even declined Cecil's invitation to come and sit with
her in her drawing-room.

"Oh, no," she said. "I hate being still; I am in no humor for tal