"Well, Elsie?" she asked quietly.
"That was why I hedged about going to Enderby," said Elsie incoherently, "I didn't dare let Uncle John see my dimples. They would give me away, you see, Cousin Julia."
Then she suddenly bethought herself.
"Oh, but you're not my Cousin Julia any more!" she cried, and burst into a tumult of weeping.
Her stepmother gathered the girl to her, and Elsie sobbed wildly on her breast. Mrs. Moss, who had been more severe with Elsie Marley at Enderby than she had ever been with any one before, was now disposed to be very gentle—perhaps over-lenient—with the real culprit.
"Yes, Elsie, I am your Cousin Julia—to the end of things," Miss Pritchard assured her. And she spoke almost solemnly. "But tell me, dear—you didn't know what you were doing? Oh, Elsie, you didn't realize that it wasn't—that it was—wrong?"
"Not at first—not when I did it," sobbed Elsie. Then she uncovered her face. "But I knew afterward. It came to me then, and I knew it was the sort of wrong you think worst of all. And so do I, honestly, Cousin Julia."
Again Miss Pritchard walked to the window. Elsie's eyes followed her in agonized appeal.
"Cousin Julia!" she cried desperately. And Miss Pritchard was at her side in a moment. But though her face was all tenderness and sympathy, the pain that shone through it would have been severe retribution even had Elsie been altogether impenitent.
"Oh, Cousin Julia, I was sorry!" the girl cried, "I was terribly sorry. But it only came on me when everything was—sort of—fixed, you know. I couldn't bear to break up Elsie Marley's happiness at Enderby, and—I couldn't bear to have it—hurt you—though I know this is a lot worse. So I was going to disappear. I had my mind all made up. I was going to leave a letter so that you wouldn't feel troubled. And I thought that would sort of make up for everything, because I never would have been happy again. And then—oh, Cousin Julia, then came that chance that I knew led straight to the stage, and I lost my head. I chose to be wicked, and I suppose I lost my soul as well as my head, only—there's something that hurts as if I still had one."