The Time of Roses

by L. T. Meade

"Years ago," began Florence, speaking in a dreary tone, "I was at a school called Cherry Court School. While there I was assailed by a very great temptation. The patron of the school, Sir John Wallis, offered a prize on certain conditions to the girls. The prize meant a great deal, and covered a wide curriculum.

"It was a great opportunity, and I struggled hard to win; but Sir John Wallis, although he offered the prize to the school, in reality wanted a girl called Kitty Sharston, who was the daughter of his old friend, to get it.

"Kitty Sharston was supposed to be most likely to win the prize, and she did win it in the end; but let me tell you how. In the school was a girl as pupil teacher, whose name was Bertha Keys."

"What!" cried Mrs. Trevor: "the girl who has been companion to Mrs. Aylmer: whom my son has so often mentioned?"

"The very same girl. Oh, I don't want to abuse her too much, and yet I cannot tell my terrible story without mentioning her. She tempted me; she was very clever, and she tempted me mightily. She wrote the essay for me, the prize essay which was hers, not mine. Oh, I know you are shocked, I feel your hand trembling; but let me hold it; don't draw it away. She wrote the essay, and it was read aloud before all the guests and all the other girls as mine, and I won the Scholarship; yes, I won it through the essay written by Bertha Keys."

"That was very terrible, my dear. How could you bear it? How could you?"

"I went to London. You remember how I came to see you. I had very little money, just twenty pounds, and mother, who had only fifty pounds a year, could not help me, and I was so wretched that I did not know what to do. I went from one place to another offering myself as teacher, although I hated teaching and I could not teach well; but no one wanted me, and I was in despair, and I used to get so desperately hungry too. Oh, you cannot tell what it is to want a meal—just to have a good dinner, say, once a week, and bread-and-butter all the rest of the days. Oh, you do feel so empty when you live on bread-and-butter and nothing else! Then I had a letter from Bertha, and she made me a proposal. She sent with the letter a manuscript. Ah! I feel you start now."

"This is terrible!" said Mrs. Trevor. She stood up in her excitement; she backed a little way from Florence.

"You guess all, but I must go on telling you," continued the poor girl. "She sent this manuscript, and she asked me to use it as my own. She said she did not want any of the money, and she spoke specious words, and I was tempted. But I struggled, I did struggle. It was Miss Franks who really was the innocent cause of pushing me over the gulf, for she read the manuscript and said it was very clever, and she showed it to her brother, the man I am now engaged to, and he said it was clever, and it was accepted for the Argonaut almost before I knew what I was doing; and that was the beginning of everything. I was famous. Bertha was the person who wrote the stories and the essays. I was wearing borrowed plumes, and I was not a bit clever; and, oh, Mrs. Trevor, the end has come now, for Mrs. Aylmer has died and has left all her great wealth to the hospitals, and I have had a letter from Bertha. You may read it, Mrs. Trevor: do read it. This Is what Bertha says."

As Florence spoke, she thrust Bertha's letter into Mrs. Trevor's hand.