. He worked at it for days. There weren't any
paints red enough for the wound, and he had to go to Stralsund on
purpose. He thought no end of it." And Letty, scared though she was,
could not resist giggling a little.

"Do you mean to tell me that Miss Leech knows about this?" insisted
Anna.

"Rather not. It's a secret. He made me promise faithfully never to tell
a soul. Of course it doesn't matter talking to you, because you're one
of the persons concerned. You can't be married, you know, without
knowing about it, so I'm not breaking my promise talking to you----"

"Married? What unutterable rubbish have you got into your head?"

"That's what I said--or something like it. I said it was jolly rot. He
said, 'What's rot?' I said 'That.'"

"But what?" asked Anna angrily. She longed to shake her.

"Why, that about marrying you. I told him it was rot, and I was sure you
wouldn't, but as he didn't know what rot was, it wasn't much good. He
hunted it out in the dictionary, and still he didn't know."

Anna stood looking at her with indignant eyes. "You don't know what you
have done," she said, "evidently you don't. It is a dreadful thing that
the moment Miss Leech leaves you you should begin to talk of such
things--such horrid things--with a stranger. A little girl of your
age----"

"I didn't begin," whimpered Letty, overcome by the wrath in Anna's
voice.

"But all this time you have been going on with it, instead of at once
telling Miss Leech or me."

"I never met a--a lover before--I thought it--great fun."

"Then all those flowers were from him?"

"Ye--es." Letty was in tears.

"He thought I knew they were from him?"

No answer.

"Did he?" insisted Anna.

"Ye--es."

"You are a very wicked little girl," said Anna, with awful sternness.
"You have been acting untruths every day for ages, which is just as bad
as telling them. I don't believe you have an idea of the horridness of
what you have done--I hope you have not. Of course your lessons at Lohm
have come to an end. You will not go there again. Probably I shall send
you home to your mother. I am nearly sure that I shall. Go away." And
she pointed to the door.

That night neither Letty nor Miss Leech appeared at supper; both were
shut up in their rooms in tears. Miss Leech was quite unable to forgive
herself. It was all her fault, she felt. She had been appalled when Anna
showed her the heart and told her what had been going on while she was
learning t