"Oh, dear! How dreadful for him!"
"Yes, and dreadful for me, too! Oh, I hate the thought of being poor, I hate it! Think what it means for me, Violet! I didn't realise all it meant at first when father wrote and said he'd met with heavy financial losses and that he'd arranged with Miss Orchardson for me to leave here for good at the end of the term—I'm not coming back to Helmsford College again. But, since, I've heard from my grandmother, and she says father will have to begin the world afresh, and she cannot help him because he's borrowed a lot of money from her and lost it, but she is going to make a home for me. Oh, Violet, she's such a cross old thing! Think what a life I shall lead with her! And—and she says that after my education is finished—she's going to send me to a school at Bath—I shall have to earn my own living. Oh, dear!"
"Oh, I would not trouble about that if I were you," Violet said in a consolatory tone, "a great many girls have to earn their own livings; I, for one, shall have to do so, I expect."
"Yes, but it's different for you! You've always known it, and you haven't wasted your time at school as I have."
This was very true. Violet sat silently thinking, her heart full of pity as she looked at the dejected figure opposite her at the table.
"Oh, I am sorry for you!" she cried at length; "and for poor Mr. Hosking, too! I suppose you are very fond of your father, are you not?"
"Yes." Agnes' face quivered, and her tears flowed again. There was a soft spot in her heart for the father who had showed his affection for her by an over-indulgence which had done much to make her the selfish girl she was. "It must be very hard lines for him," she went on; "he said in his last letter that he was glad my mother had not lived to see him a ruined man—you know mother died when I was quite a little girl, I hardly remember her at all. Poor father! I wish he wouldn't send me to grandmother; I'd so much rather be with him, but he says that's impossible now. I am afraid he's very, very poor! Fancy my father poor!"
"Yes, fancy!" Violet said dreamily. It was difficult to realise it indeed. How strange it was that she should be made Agnes' confidante, she who had suffered so much at her hands!
Perhaps Agnes guessed something of what was passing through her companion's mind, for by-and-by she said in a voice, the faltering accents of which expressed real regret:—
"I don't suppose that after school breaks up at Christmas you and I will ever meet again. Before we part I want to ask you to try to forgive me for—for having suspected that you took my purse; I want you to understand that I really am sorry—I tried to tell you so at the beginning of the term, but you would not listen. And I am sorry, too, for all the rude, unkind remarks I used to make to you and your sisters when we were at Miss Minter's, and for the way I spoke to Ann Reed that day at Streatham. Do—do believe me."