"May I ask one question?" said Miss Gibbs, who also had been called to the conclave. "How is it that Mrs. West affirms that she saw Raymonde in the post office at six o'clock on Friday, while Veronica and Hermie declare that at five minutes to six she was sitting at the piano in the practising-room? It is not possible to reach the village in five minutes."
Miss Beasley started. This aspect of the matter had not occurred to her.
"Raymonde has been troublesome," continued Miss Gibbs, "but I have always found her scrupulously straight and truthful. Such a lapse as this seems to me utterly foreign to her character."
"You never know what a girl will do till she's tried!" commented the Rev. T. W. Beasley. "Better expel her at once, as a warning to the others."
"Give her a chance!" pleaded Miss Gibbs. "The evidence is really so unsatisfactory. Wait a day or two, and see if we can sift it!"
"I wish I knew what is best!" vacillated the Principal. "It is so near the end of the term that it seems a pity to send Raymonde home till next week, when she would be going in any case. I will call at the post office, and make enquiries as to the exact time she came there last Friday. I think I won't decide anything before Saturday."
Miss Beasley stuck to this determination, in spite of her brother's protests against over-leniency and lack of discipline. She excused herself on the ground that she did not wish to disturb the examinations, which were to continue until Friday evening. Meanwhile Raymonde was in the position of a remanded prisoner at the bar. She was not allowed to mingle with the rest of the school. She was conducted, under Mademoiselle's escort, to her place in the examination hall, but spent the remainder of her time in the practising-room, which served as a temporary jail. Her meals were sent up to her, and no girl was allowed, under penalty of expulsion, to attempt to communicate with her. She was not permitted to go to the dormitory at night, but slept on a chair-bed in Miss Beasley's dressing-room.
Naturally the episode was the talk of the school. Its interest eclipsed even the horror of the examinations. It seemed a mystery which no one could disentangle. The girls remembered only too well that Raymonde had been very secretive about how she had obtained the fountain pen; but, on the other hand, witnesses declared that they had seen her both at the post office and in the practising-room, when she certainly could not have been in two places at once.