“And who is pretty sure always to admit, in the end, that it was the best way?” asked Mrs. Mason, laughing.
“Mamsie, you are getting spoiled. See if I say yours was the best way this time!”
French came on the first of the two examination-days. Laura and Helen led their class. Laura did very well, but Helen acquitted herself triumphantly, and sat down amid a little buzz of congratulations and praises.
But somehow the triumph left a bitter taste in her mouth. She did not look at Laura, and even if she had she would not have understood the scorn on Laura’s face, since she was quite unaware that her raid on her aunt’s desk had been observed.
Still she was not happy. She needed no scorn from outside, she had already begun to feel such bitterness of self-contempt scorching her soul. It seemed to her that up to this moment she had been as one under an evil spell.
She had thought of no single thing except her triumph over her cousin—quite careless as to the means to this hotly desired end. Now she began to realize how base those means had been, and to long to exchange her success for any direst possible failure.
Mrs. Mason was watching her, and when they started to go home, she found an instant in which to whisper to Laura,—
“Be gentle to her, girlie; she will suffer enough to-night.”
At supper Helen’s place was vacant. She sent word that her head ached too much to come.
Her aunt despatched to her room tea and strawberries and bread-and-butter enough for the hungriest of girls, and then left her to herself.