Her scheme was ripening to perfection. Mabel, of course, would yield; the money would be forthcoming. Priscilla would stay at the school, and Annie would have her hour of triumph.
It was half-an-hour before bed-time on that same evening when clever and wicked Annie had a further conference with Priscilla. She found poor Priscilla looking very pale and woe-begone, seated all by herself at one end of the long schoolroom.
“Come out,” said Annie; “it is a perfectly lovely evening, and we need not go up to our horrid beds for another half-hour.”
“You want to tempt me again,” said Priscilla, “I won’t go with you.”
“You needn’t,” said Annie with emphasis. “I have only this to say. Your prize paper is finished?”
“Yes.”
“I will come to your room for it very, very early to-morrow morning.”
“You know, Annie, you daren’t come to my room.”
“I dare, and will,” said Annie. “I will be with you at five o’clock, before any of the servants are up. At that hour we will safely transact a very important little piece of business.”
“You mean,” said Priscilla, raising her haggard face and looking with her dark-grey eyes full at the girl, “that you want me to go down for ever in my own estimation, and to proclaim to my good teachers, to dear Mrs Lyttelton, and to all the girls here that I am not myself at all. You want me to read an essay written by one of the stupidest girls in the school as my own, and you want her to read mine—which may probably be the best of those written—and you want her to win the prize which ought to be mine.”