would be five
minutes before they must put their lights out! Once done, what a
relief it would be!

She darted from the room, not daring to trust a moment's delay; but
when she reached the corridor the lights were already turned out. All
would soon be darkness, and then none were allowed to leave their
rooms.

But Susan was desperate now; she knew her way down the long flights of
stairs so well that she had no fear: her only thought was to reach
Miss Ashton, to confess, to know her punishment, if punishment there
were to be.

She flitted softly, like a ghost, through the long corridors, down the
long stairs; but when she came to Miss Ashton's door her gas was
turned out, and that meant she would not open her door again that
night.

"I'll knock! Perhaps, just perhaps, she will let me in;" but there was
no response to Susan's knock. She stood waiting until she shivered
with nervous dread from head to foot, then she crept back to her room,
and tossed restlessly through a weary night.

CHAPTER XXXIII.

SPRING VACATION.

The bright light of a sunny day has a wonderful influence in quieting
fears, and the next morning when Susan waked and found her room
cheerful, everything looking natural and pleasant, her first feeling
was one of shame for all she had suffered the night before. Nothing
was easier now than to make herself believe she had been foolish in
her suspicion of Marion; indeed, it was not long before she had made
herself almost sure that Marion knew nothing about the stolen story,
that she had wronged her in suspecting, even if she did, that she
would be mean enough to betray her. For the first time since she
copied it, she treated Marion not only kindly but affectionately, much
to Marion's surprise, for she knew how near she had come to betraying
Susan, and remembered Miss Ashton's saying, "If you do not choose to
tell me what is the matter with Susan, I must be all the more
observant of her myself." Would she watch her? Could she ever in any
way find out about "Storied West Rock"? "At any rate," Marion
comforted herself by thinking, "it will not be through me; but I wish
I had not said even what I did."

She wondered over Susan's advances, and met them coldly, shamefacedly.
"If you only knew," she said to herself, "how different you would
act!"

Very important as these events seem to those particularly engaged,
they make little apparent difference in the life of a large school.

Marion again