“You never know what a girl will do till she’s tried!” commented the Rev. T. W. Beasley. “Better expel her at once, as a warning to the others.”
“Give her a chance!” pleaded Miss Gibbs. “The evidence is really so unsatisfactory. Wait a day or two, and see if we can sift it!”
“I wish I knew what is best!” vacillated the Principal. “It is so near the end of the term that it seems a pity to send Raymonde home till next week, when she would be going in any case. I will call at the post office, and make enquiries as to the exact time she came there last Friday. I think I won’t decide anything before Saturday.”
Miss Beasley stuck to this determination, in spite of her brother’s protests against over-leniency and lack of discipline. She excused herself on the ground that she did not wish to disturb the examinations, which were to continue until Friday evening. Meanwhile Raymonde was in the position of a remanded prisoner at the bar. She was not allowed to mingle with the rest of the school. She was conducted, under Mademoiselle’s escort, to her place in the examination hall, but spent the remainder of her time in the practising-room, which served as a temporary jail. Her meals were sent up to her, and no girl was allowed, under penalty of expulsion, to attempt to communicate with her. She was not permitted to go to the dormitory at 278 night, but slept on a chair-bed in Miss Beasley’s dressing-room.
Naturally the episode was the talk of the school. Its interest eclipsed even the horror of the examinations. It seemed a mystery which no one could disentangle. The girls remembered only too well that Raymonde had been very secretive about how she had obtained the fountain pen; but, on the other hand, witnesses declared that they had seen her both at the post office and in the practising-room, when she certainly could not have been in two places at once.
The Fifth decided that the Reverend T. W. Beasley must be at the bottom of it. There had never been any disturbances before he came to the school, and since his arrival everything had been unpleasant, therefore he must be distinctly responsible for Raymonde’s misfortunes; which was hardly a reasonable conclusion, however loyal it might be to their friend. The Mystics talked the matter over in private, and suggested many bold but quite impracticable schemes, such as subscribing the missing money amongst them, or throwing up a rope-ladder to the sanctum window for Raymonde to escape by, neither of which plans would have cleared her character.
Raymonde herself preserved an extraordinary attitude of obstinacy. She utterly refused to give any more explanations. She did not cry, but there was a grey misery in her face that was worse than tears. She walked in and out of the examination hall with her head proudly erect. Her comrades, with surreptitious sympathy, glanced up as she passed, but under the lynx eye of their examiner 279 were unable to convey to her the notes which several of them at least had prepared ready to pass under the desk.
On Friday afternoon Raymonde was sitting alone in the practising-room, when the door was unlocked and Veronica entered with a tray.
“I’ve come to bring your tea,” explained the monitress. “I don’t really know whether I’m supposed to be allowed to talk to you, but Miss Beasley didn’t tell me not to, so I shall. Look here, Ray, why don’t you end this wretched business?”
“I only wish I could!” groaned Raymonde.