As Verena spoke she held in her open palm the long-lost thimble. Poor Pauline had not the most remote idea that the thimble was still in the pocket of the blue serge dress. She had, indeed, since the day of her accident, forgotten its existence.
"Where did you get it?" she asked, her face very white, her eyes very startled.
"In the pocket of the dress you wore on the day you were nearly drowned in the White Bay."
"I told you not to mention that day," said Pauline. Her whole face changed. "I remember," she said slowly, but she checked herself. The words reached her lips, but did not go beyond them. "Put it down, Verena," she said. "Put it there on the mantelpiece."
"Then you won't tell me how you got it? It is not yours. You know it belongs to Aunt Sophy."
"And it is not yours, Renny, and you have no right to interfere. And what is more, I desire you not to interfere. I don't love anybody very much now, but I shall hate you if you interfere in this matter."
Verena laid the thimble on the mantelpiece.
"You can leave me, Renny. I am a very bad girl; I don't pretend I am anything else, but I won't talk to you now."
Before she reached the door of the room she had burst into tears. Her agony was so great at Pauline's behavior to her that her tears became sobs, and her sobs almost cries of pain. Pauline, lying on the bed, did not take the least notice of Verena. She turned her head away, and when her sister had left the room and shut the door Pauline sprang from the bed and turned the key in the lock.
"Now, I am safe," she thought. "What is the matter with me? There never was anything so hard as the heart that is inside me. I don't care a bit whether Renny cries or whether she doesn't cry. I don't care a bit what happens to any one. I only want to be let alone."
At dinner-time Pauline appeared, and tried to look as though nothing had happened. The other girls looked neat and pretty. They had not the least idea through what a tragedy Verena and Pauline were now living. Verena showed marks of her storm of weeping, and her face was terribly woebegone. Miss Tredgold guessed that things were coming to a crisis, and she was prepared to wait.
Now, Miss Tredgold was a very good woman; she was also a very wise and a very temperate one. She was filled with a spirit of forbearance, and with the beautiful grace of charity. She was all round as good a woman as ever lived; but she was not a mother. Had she been a mother she would have gone straight to Pauline and put her arms round her, and so acted that the hard little heart would have melted, and the words that could not pass her lips would have found themselves able to do so, and the misery and the further sin would have been averted. But instead of doing anything of this sort, Miss Tredgold resolved to assemble the children after breakfast the next day, and to talk to them in a very plain way indeed; to assemble all before her, and to entreat the guilty ones to confess, promising them absolute forgiveness in advance. Having made up her mind, she felt quite peaceful and happy, and went down to interview her brother-in-law.