Chapter Sixteen.
“An Enemy Hath Done This.”
The short evening service was over, and one by one, in orderly procession, the girls left the chapel. Annie was about to rise to her feet to follow her school-companions, when Mrs Willis stooped down and whispered something in her ear. Her face became instantly suffused with a dull red; she resumed her seat, and buried her face in both her hands. One or two of the girls noticed her despondent attitude as they left the chapel, and Cecil Temple looked back with a glance of such unutterable sympathy that Annie’s proud, suffering little heart would have been touched could she but have seen the look.
Presently the young steps died away, and Annie, raising her head, saw that she was alone with Mr Everard, who seated himself in the place which Mrs Willis had occupied by her side.
“Your governess has asked me to speak to you, my dear,” he said, in his kind and fatherly tones; “she wants us to discuss this thing which is making you so unhappy quite fully together.” Here the clergyman paused, and, noticing a sudden wistful and soft look in the girl’s brown eyes, he continued: “Perhaps, however, you have something to say to me which will throw light on this mystery?”
“No, sir, I have nothing to say,” replied Annie, and now again the sullen expression passed like a wave over her face.
“Poor child,” said Mr Everard. “Perhaps, Annie,” he continued, “you do not quite understand me—you do not quite read my motive in talking to you to-night. I am not here in any sense to reprove you. You are either guilty of this sin, or you are not guilty. In either case I pity you; it is very hard, very bitter, to be falsely accused—I pity you much if this is the case; but it is still harder, Annie, still more bitter, still more absolutely crushing to be accused of a sin which we are trying to conceal. In that terrible case God Himself hides His face. Poor child, poor child, I pity you most of all if you are guilty.”
Annie had again covered her face, and bowed her head over her hands. She did not speak for a moment, but presently Mr Everard heard a low sob, and then another, and another, until at last her whole frame was shaken with a perfect tempest of weeping.
The old clergyman, who had seen many strange phases of human nature, who had in his day comforted and guided more than one young school-girl, was far too wise to do anything to check this flow of grief. He knew Annie would speak more fully and more frankly when her tears were over. He was right. She presently raised a very tear-stained face to the clergyman.
“I felt very bitter at your coming to speak to me,” she began. “Mrs Willis has always sent for you when everything else has failed with us girls, and I did not think she would treat me so. I was determined not to say anything to you. Now, however, you have spoken good words to me, and I can’t turn away from you. I will tell you all that is in my heart. I will promise before God to conceal nothing, if only you will do one thing for me.”