"One day he asked me if I had any friends who had money that they would like to double. I had fifty dollars of my own that I had been saving for ever so long, and told him about it. He said that he manipulated stocks a little (whatever that is) in connection with his real estate business. He asked me to give him the money and let him prove to me how easily he could double it. I did, and he brought me back one hundred dollars.
"Of course, I was delighted. Then mother sent me fifty dollars for Christmas, and I bought all those presents. It took every cent I had, and I was awfully silly, for no one cared as much for them as if they'd been pretty little gifts that I made myself. That was my first folly.
"The next was those three gowns. They haven't been paid for yet. I haven't dared give father the bills, and I can never face mother. She would never have allowed me to order anything like them. Well, you know how badly I behaved at the house party, and how nice you all were to me, even when I was so hateful.
"On New Year's Night, when we were coming from Nesbits, Henry Hammond asked me for the class money. He said he had a chance to treble it, and that it was too good an opportunity to be lost.
"I refused point blank at first, and then he talked and talked in that smooth way of his until I began to think what a fine thing it would be to walk into the class and say, 'Girls, here are fifteen hundred dollars instead of five hundred.' I was feeling awfully cross at you girls just then, because he made me believe that you were slighting me and leaving me out of things. Besides, all of you had warned me against him, and I wanted to show you that I knew more than you did.
"I didn't promise to give it to him that night, but the more I thought of it the more I inclined toward his views, and the upshot of the matter was that I drew it out of the bank and let him have it."
Marian paused and looked piteously at Grace. Then she said brokenly:
"He lost it, Grace, every cent of it. The week after I gave it to him he told me that luck had been against him, and that it was all gone. When I asked him what he intended to do about it he promised that he would sell some real estate of his and turn the money over to me to give back to the class. He said it was his fault for persuading me to do it, and that I shouldn't suffer for it. But he never kept his word.
"Last week I asked him for the last time if he would refund the money, and he laughed at me and said that I had risked it and ought to accept my losses with good grace. I threatened to expose him, and he said if I did I should only succeed in making more trouble for myself than for him. He had only speculated with what I had given him. Where I obtained the money was none of his business, and as long as I had appropriated it I would have to abide by the consequences.
"Of course, I was desperate and didn't know what to do. I had no money of my own, and I didn't dare ask my father for it. I had to tell some one, so I told Eleanor."