"Milly's; I did it, not Lucy."
"O Lena!" she exclaimed in a shocked voice.
"Don't speak like that, Gerty, please. I can't bear you to be angry with me; I didn't mean to do it really."
"I am not angry, Lena dear; but I don't understand about it. Come and sit down and tell me what you mean." Going to the window, she drew up the blind and drew a chair up for Lena as well as herself; but Lena would sit nowhere but on the floor. Crouching down at Gertrude's feet, and hiding her face on her lap, she told her tale in broken words. Gertrude listened, without saying one word until she had ended; then stooping down and putting her arms round her she said, "Poor Lena, how unhappy you must have been all this time!"
"Not since I have been here; but before it was dreadful. Do you think they will ever forgive me?"
"Of course they will, Lena; how can you doubt it?"
"But Papa said he couldn't bear us to do a dishonourable, wicked thing; and Gerty, he spoke so sternly, that I was afraid to tell him. And then I thought Mama and Milly knew, and had forgiven me without telling him," repeated Lena again.
"Poor Lena!" was all Gertrude said again, as she stroked back the child's hair from her flushed face, for by this time Lena had found her way from the floor to Gertrude's lap. A long silence fell upon them. Lena lay very still, resting her head against her kind companion's shoulder, feeling, oh, so thankful! that the wretched secret was no longer locked up in her own heart. At last she said, "How can I tell them?"
"You must write to them, dear, to-night; don't put off, for it only makes it more difficult."
"I am sure I don't know what I shall say. I shall never be able to write it."