“Angry with you.”
“Why so? I never! What do you mean now?”
“I must be angry with you, Evelyn—very angry. But I will say no more by way of excusing my own conduct. I will say nothing of either sorrow or anger. I want to state a fact to you.”
“Get it over,” said Evelyn.
Miss Henderson now approached the table; she opened the History at the reign of Edward I., and taking two tiny fragments of torn paper from the pages of the book, she laid them in her open palm. In her other hand she held the mutilated copy of Sesame and Lilies. The print on the torn scrap exactly corresponded with the print in the injured volume. Miss Henderson glanced from Evelyn to the scraps of paper, and from Evelyn to the copy of Ruskin.
“You have intelligence,” she said; “you must see what this means.”
She then carefully replaced the bits of paper in the History and laid it on the table by her side.
“Between now,” she said, “and this time yesterday Miss Thompson discovered these scraps of paper in the copy of the History which you had to read on the morning of the day when you first came to school. The scraps are evidently part of the pages torn from the injured book. Have you anything to say with regard to them?”
Evelyn shook her head; her face was white and her eyes bright. But there was a small red spot on each cheek—a spot about the size of a farthing. It did not grow any larger. It gave a curious effect to the pallid face. The obstinacy of the mouth was very apparent. The cleft in the chin still further showed the curious bias of the girl’s character.
“Have you anything to say—any remark to make?”