She brooded over the idea until the temptation possessed her like an evil fate. In her passionate girl’s heart she said to herself that she wanted to die if Laura triumphed over her at school. Laura had every thing else; why should she have that, also?
She had said at first, “If only it were right to have the key!” Then she said, “if only she could chance on the key, somehow!” Then, “if only she could get at her aunt’s desk and find the key!” At last it was,—
“I will get at the key, somehow!”
This last was the very morning before the examination. She rose from her bed in the dainty blue-hung room her aunt had taken such pains to make pretty for her, and went softly downstairs, in the young spring morning.
Her bare feet made no sound on the thick stair-carpet. She looked like a little white-clad ghost that had forgotten to flee away at the first cock-crowing, as an orthodox ghost ought; but no ghost ever had such glowing cheeks, crimson with excitement, such great wide-opened gray eyes with green depths in them.
She held in her hand a large bunch of keys belonging to her mother. It was just a chance whether one of them would fit her aunt’s desk.
She fairly trembled with excitement. She had lost all thought of the wrong she was doing—of the shame and meanness of this act, which must be done in silence and mystery; she thought only of the triumph which success would mean.
She stood before the desk, and tried key after key with her shaking fingers.
At last one fitted. In a moment more the key to the French method was in her hand.