"I put you upon your honour, Ulyth, to answer this question perfectly frankly. Have you any reason to suspect that some of the juniors have surreptitiously been buying cakes and sweets?"
Thus asked point-blank, Ulyth was obliged to relate what she had overheard; and Miss Bowes, determined to get at the root of the business, cross-questioned her closely, until she had dragged from her reluctant pupil the account of the occurrence in the garden and the conversation with the travelling hawker-woman.
"This is more serious even than I had feared," groaned Miss Bowes. "I thought I could have trusted my girls."
"I think most of them were ashamed of it," ventured Ulyth.
"It is just possible that Rona refuses to speak because she will not involve her schoolfellows."
"Oh yes, yes!" cried Ulyth, clutching at any straw to excuse her room-mate's conduct. "That's quite likely. Or, Miss Bowes, I've been thinking that perhaps it was a queer kind of loyalty to me. You know Rona's very fond of me, and she was quite absurdly angry because Stephanie's pendant was to go to the exhibition and not mine. She may have changed them, hoping it wouldn't be noticed and that mine would be packed up, and perhaps she intended to put Stephanie's back in the studio when the parcel had safely gone. Rona does such impulsive things."
Miss Bowes shook her head sadly.
"I wish I could think so. Unfortunately the other circumstances lend suspicion to a graver motive."