he height where she was standing and saw
Betty Vivian walking slowly across the common.

Betty was alone. Her head was slightly bent, but the rest of her young
figure was bolt upright. She was going towards the spot where those
sparse clumps of heather occupied their neglected position at one side
of the "forest primeval."

When first Sibyl saw Betty her heart gave a great throb of longing to
rush to her, to fling her arms round her, to kiss her, to cling to her
side. But she suppressed that impulse. She loved Betty, but she was
afraid of her. Betty was the last sort of girl to put up with what she
considered liberties; Sibyl was a person to whom she was utterly
indifferent, and she would by no means have liked Sibyl to kiss her.
From Sibyl's vantage-ground, therefore, she watched Betty, herself
unseen. Then it suddenly occurred to her that she might continue to
watch her, but from a more favorable point of view.

There was a little knoll at one end of the orchard, and there was a very
old gnarled apple-tree at the edge of the knoll. If Sibyl ran fast she
could climb into the apple-tree and look right down on to the common. No
sooner did the thought come to her than she resolved to act on it.
Knowledge is always power, and she need not tell Fanny anything at all
unless she liked. She could be faithful to poor Betty, who was in
disgrace, and at the same time she might know something about her. It
was so very odd that Betty was expelled from the Specialities. She could
not possibly have resigned, for had she done so there would have been a
great fuss, and everything would have been explained to the satisfaction
of the school; whereas that mysterious sentence on the blackboard left
the whole thing involved in darkest night. What had Betty done? Had she
really told a lie about what she had found in the old stump of oak? Was
it not a piece of wood after all? Had she really sent Sibyl into the
flower-garden to gather marguerites and make herself a figure of fun at
the Specialities' entertainment? Had she done it to get rid of her just
because--because she wanted--she wanted to remove something from the
stump of the old oak-tree? Oh, if Betty were that sort--if it were
possible--even Sibyl Ray felt that she could not love her any longer! It
was Fanny, after all, who was a noble girl. Fanny wanted to get to the
bottom of things. Fanny herself could not do what an unimportant little
girl like Sibyl could do. After all, there w