[Illustration: It looked very much as if all the mysteries were solved]
"My opera glasses!" exclaimed Mrs. Henry.
"My real lace collar!" cried Mrs. Rhodes. "I suppose this _is_ Gladys's trunk?"
"Oh, certainly. Can't you smell the perfume? Nobody else uses this kind. Besides, her name is on the outside."
"Yes, that's right. Now, I wonder what we'd better do about this."
"We'll have to talk it over with Father. I'm afraid there's no doubt this time."
"I'm sure there isn't," returned Mrs. Rhodes. "It's the de Milligan girl without question. I don't know why I didn't suspect her sooner."
"Well, _I_ didn't," said Mrs. Henry. "And she was right in my own corridor. I'm awfully sorry about all this."
"I'd have been sorrier," returned the older woman, grimly, "if it had been any other girl. I never did like this one."
When Laura was called into Doctor Rhodes's office and invited to explain how all those things had found their way into her trunk, she appeared to be very much surprised. She was _sure_ she didn't know. She said she supposed that Sallie Dickinson had put them there, or if not Sallie, one of the maids; or possibly Marjory Vale. Marjory was ever a deceitful child, much given to thievery. She herself had often warned the other girls against Marjory.
Laura, standing with her back against the wall, seemed quite calm and unconcerned, except that she shifted her chewing gum from side to side with greater frequency than usual.
Doctor Rhodes had rather a terrible eye. Two of them in fact. He fixed them both on Laura's unperturbed countenance and gazed so very sternly at her that presently Laura began to quail. She gulped suddenly and swallowed her gum. And then she began to stammer excuses.
She liked pretty things. She couldn't resist taking things when it was so easy to do it. Her fingers _liked_ to take things. She didn't always want what she had taken. Sometimes she wished afterwards that she hadn't taken them. Her father was stingy and wouldn't give her expensive trinkets. Her mother _would_ but didn't have the money. Her mother _wanted_ her to have nice things.
When did she take the things? Oh, at night sometimes. Her roommate, Victoria Webster, slept like a log and didn't miss her if she left the room. Or daytimes, by getting upstairs ahead of the other girls it was easy enough to dash into a room, grab a bracelet or a pin left carelessly about and hide it in her pocket. There were plenty of chances like that, when girls were so heedless with their belongings. Really, it was the girls' own fault _much_ more than hers. Yes, she _had_ put those beads in Marjory's pocket while the dress was on Marjory's bed, and she had placed that purse in Sallie's room. She _wanted_ people to think they had taken them--it had seemed a clever thing to do--perhaps it wasn't as clever as she had thought. But if Doctor Rhodes would just forgive her _this_ time, she wouldn't touch another thing, _ever_.