“Look at me, my child.”
With an effort Betty raised her eyes, glanced at Mrs. Haddo, and then looked down again. “Wait, please, will you?” she said.
“I am about to do so. You are unhappy.”
Betty nodded.
“Will you tell me what is the matter?”
Betty shook her head.
“Do you think it is right for you to be unhappy in a school like mine, and not to tell me—not to tell the one who is placed over you as a mother would be placed were she alive—what is troubling you?”
“It may be wrong,” said Betty; “but even so, I cannot tell you.”
“You must understand,” said Mrs. Haddo, speaking with great restraint and extreme distinctness, “that it is impossible for me to allow this state of things to continue. I know nothing, and yet in one sense I know all. Nothing has been told me with regard to the true story of your unhappiness, but the knowledge that you are unhappy reached me before you yourself confirmed it. To-night Mr. Fairfax found you out of doors—a broken rule, Betty, but I pass that over. He heard you sobbing in the bitterness of your distress, and discovered that you were lying face downwards on the grass in the fir-plantation. When he called you, you went to him and told him you had lost something.”