“I cannot tell you,” she murmured; “it breaks my heart, but I cannot tell you.”
“You have defied me, Cecil,” said Mrs Willis in a tone of deep pain. “I must, my dear, insist on your obedience, but not now. Miss Good, will you take Miss Temple to the chapel? I will come to you, Cecil, in an hour’s time.”
Cecil walked down the room crying silently. Her deep distress and her very firm refusal to disclose what she knew had made a great impression on her school-fellows. They all felt troubled and uneasy, and Annie Forest’s face was very pale.
“This thing, this wicked, mischievous thing has gone deeper than I feared,” said Mrs Willis, when Cecil had left the room.
“Only some very strong motive would make Cecil Temple behave as she is now doing. She is influenced by a mistaken idea of what is right; she wishes to shield the guilty person. I may as well tell you all, young ladies, that, dear as Cecil is to me, she is now under the ban of my severe displeasure. Until she confesses the truth and humbles herself before me, I cannot be reconciled to her. I cannot permit her to associate with you. She has done very wrong, and her punishment must be proportionately severe. There is one chance for her, however. Will the girl whom she is mistakenly, though generously, trying to shield, come forward and confess her guilt, and so release poor Cecil from the terrible position in which she has placed herself? By doing so, the girl who has caused all this misery will at least show me that she is trying to repent.”
Mrs Willis paused again, and now she looked down the room with a face of almost entreaty. Several pairs of eyes were fixed anxiously on her, several looked away, and many girls glanced in the direction of Annie Forest, who, feeling herself suspected, returned their glances with bold defiance, and instantly assumed her most reckless manner.
Mrs Willis waited for a full minute.
“The culprit is not noble enough,” she said then. “Now, girls, I must ask each of you to come up one by one and deny or confess this charge. As you do so, you are silently to leave the school-room and go up to your rooms, and prepare for the walk which has been so painfully delayed. Miss Conway, you are at the head of the school, will you set the example?”
One by one the girls of the head class stepped up to their teacher, and of each one she asked the same question—
“Are you guilty?”