“It was you, then?” exclaimed Billie.
“Yes, and when I met you and Mary I had the necklace with me and I didn’t think I had strength enough to get to my room. When we got home from Mrs. Ruggles’ next day and I found Fannie had been sent to town, I knew something had happened. I thought perhaps she might have taken the necklace with her, but the next morning, when you and Mary left before breakfast, I was certain that one of you had been accused.
“You never can understand how I suffered. And yet it was what I had planned when I was so angry. Late Monday afternoon Mr. Bangs, a detective, came to see me. He wrote across his card ‘Pierre Lafitte,’ and I was convinced then that he knew everything.”
“You did tell Fannie about the card that was in the box of jewels, then?”
Belle hung her head.
“Yes,” she said, at last. “In the very beginning, before I had learned to loathe her and myself so, I told it to Fannie.
“After Mr. Bangs had left,” she went on, “I hurried as fast as I could to Mme. Alta’s lodgings and told her that everything had been discovered. The husband came in while I was there and ordered her to leave at once. The ship was in the harbor, he said. I was ordered to go, too, and it really did seem best. I felt I should be disgraced if I stayed and I was too miserable to reason much, anyway. They were glad to go. They hated it here, and they were afraid to leave me, I suppose, for fear I would tell. Ever since they were almost caught in Smugglers’ Cave, they have been very careful.
“I have made a great many people suffer,” Belle went on, “Mary and Billie and Mrs. Price and Mrs. St. Clair, and I have suffered, too, perhaps more than any of you. But I have learned a great deal. I never knew before what a wicked, spoiled girl I was. Mamma and papa never denied me anything in my life. I have been indulged and petted until I have been nothing but a bundle of selfishness. When the ship was wrecked and we thought we were going to sink any minute the scales dropped entirely from my eyes and I saw myself as I really was. I knelt on the deck and prayed and prayed for forgiveness until they came and told me it was my turn to be taken to shore.
“You will forgive me, won’t you Mary? I will do everything I can to make up for the trouble and unhappiness I have caused you.”
Belle stretched out her arms toward Mary and tears flowed down her cheeks and splashed on the coverlid.