Belle looked at her, colored, and hesitated; then stepped up to her, and putting her arm about her shoulder said,—
"I don't b'lieve Mabel did take it, Aunt Fanny: I don't think she could be so mean to me. I tried not to b'lieve it, and now I don't think I do. Please don't you and Miss Ashton b'lieve so either, Aunt Fanny."
Belle's "love-charity" was too much for Mabel. Taking her hands from before her face, she clasped them about her cousin's neck, and sobbed out,—
"Oh! I did, Belle. I did take it out of your desk; but I never, never meant to keep it,—no, not even to show to the locket-man; but I couldn't find it to put it back; and I'm so sorry, I'll just give you any thing in the world of mine, 'cept my papa and mamma."
Mabel's words were so incoherent that all her hearers could understand was that she had taken the locket; and though Belle had been obliged to try hard to believe in her cousin's honesty, the shock to the faith she had built up was now so great that her arm dropped from Mabel's shoulder, and she stood utterly amazed and confounded. Mrs. Walton, too, sat as if she were stricken dumb; and Miss Ashton was the first to speak, which she did in a tone more grieved and sorrowful than stern.
"And where is the locket now, Mabel? Did you say you cannot find it?"
Mabel shook her head in assent.
"What have you done with it?" asked Mrs. Walton, in a tone that Mabel had never known her mother use to her before.
The whole story was at last drawn from the child, accompanied with many sobs and tears. Belle put full faith in all she said, and almost lost sight of her own trouble in sympathy for Mabel's distress. Her arm went back about her cousin's neck, and her own pocket-handkerchief was taken out to wipe away Mabel's tears.