"You would, perhaps, like it back again?" said Mrs. Haddo.

"Ah yes--yes! but I cannot get it. Some one has taken it. It is gone."

"Once again, Betty, I ask you to give me your confidence."

"I cannot."

Mrs. Haddo resumed her seat. "Is that your very last--your
final--decision, Betty Vivian?"

"It is, Mrs. Haddo."

"How old are you, dear?"

"I have told you. I was sixteen and a half when I came. I am rather more
now."

"You are only a child, dear Betty."

"Not in mind, nor in life, nor in circumstances," replied Betty.

"We will suppose that all that is true," answered Mrs. Haddo. "We will
suppose, also, that you are cast upon the world friendless and alone.
Were such a thing to happen, what would you do?"

Betty shivered. "I don't know," she replied.

"Now, Betty, I cannot take your answer as final. I will give you a few
days longer; at the end of that time I will again beg for your
confidence. In the meanwhile I must say something very plainly. You came
to this school with your sisters under special conditions which you, my
poor child, had nothing to do with. But I must say frankly that I was
unwilling to admit you three into the school after term had begun, and
it was contrary to my rules to take girls straight into the upper school
who had never been in the lower school. Nevertheless, for the sake of my
old friend Sir John Crawford, I did this."

"Not for Fanny's sake, I hope?" said Betty, her eyes flashing for a
minute, and a queer change coming over her face.

"I have done what I did, Betty, for the sake of my dear friend Sir John
Crawford, who is your guardian and your sisters' guardian, and who is
now in India. I was unwilling to have you, my dears; but when you
arrived and I saw you, Betty, I thanked God, for I thought that I
perceived in you one whom I could love, whom I could train, whom I could
help. I was interested in you, very deeply interested, from the first. I
perceived with pleasure that my feelings towards you were shared by your
schoolfellows. You became a favorite, and you became so just because of
that beautiful birthright of yours--your keen wit, your unselfishness,
and your pleasant and bright ways. I did an extraordinary thing when I
admitted you into the school, and your schoolfellows did a thing quite
as extraordinary when they allowed you, a newcomer, to join that special
club which, more than anything else, has laid the foundation of sound
and noble morals in the school