ttle black figure, and her face softened
regretfully. "You need not look so terrified, child. Mademoiselle is
naturally very grieved and distressed, but you know her well enough to
be sure that she would forgive you if you have unintentionally broken
her pretty bottle. She would be sorry to drive you into telling a
falsehood--wouldn't you, Mademoiselle?"

"I shall say nothing to her. My bottle is gone, and it can do no good
now. But she had no right to touch my things. My room is my own, and
she had no business there at all. I thought you were a good girl,
Pixie, and remembered what I had said to you. I did not think you would
grieve me like this. I have not so many treasures!"

Mademoiselle's tears trickled down afresh, and the girls began to look
askance at Pixie, and to feel the first incredulity give place to a
horrible doubt. Why wouldn't she speak? Why did she look so guilty?
Why need she have been so alarmed at the first mention of the accident
if she had no part in bringing it about? Margaret held out her hand
with an involuntary gesture of appeal, and Pixie, seeing it, shut her
lips more tightly than ever.

"You may go to your room, Pixie," said Miss Phipps coldly. "I am very
much disappointed in you!"

CHAPTER NINE.

DARK DAYS.

The three girls who shared Pixie's room were not forbidden to speak to
her when they went upstairs to bed, and their first impulse was to pull
aside the curtains of her cubicle, where she was discovered lying on the
top of the bed, still fully dressed, with features swollen and
disfigured with crying. She was shivering, too, and the hand which Kate
touched was so icy cold that she exclaimed in horrified reproach--

"Pixie, you are freezing! What do you mean by not getting into bed?
You will catch a chill, and then goodness knows what may happen! You
may go into consumption and die."

Pixie gave a dismal little sniff, and her teeth chattered together.

"That's what I thought. A girl at Bally William died of a chill, and
consumption's in our family. Me mother's cousin suffered from it every
winter. I want to die!"

"Here, sit up! I am going to unhook you. Dear me, what a mess you have
made of your fine collar! I don't know what Lottie will say when she
sees it. Lucky girl to be out to-night and escape all this fuss! She
always gets the best of things. I never wish to spend such an evening
again, I know that!"

"Pixie, why wouldn't you tell? Why