d probably with Miss Maitland as well."

"Flossie doesn't deserve to go scot-free," said Ruth, with a glance at
the flaxen head that was discreetly disappearing through the door.

"She won't!" asserted Lettice. "Honor is the most contrary, queer,
impossible, perverse girl I've ever met. She'll let Flossie off easily
now, but she'll make her pay for it in some other way. I could see it
in her eye. She was as cool as a cucumber outside, but I'm sure that
was only the crust over the crater, and that there was the usual
volcano inside. It's bound to find a safety-valve, so Flossie had
better look out for squalls!"

Lettice was right. Honor was certainly in a most unenviable frame of
mind. She considered that Vivian had treated her unfairly in assuming
her to be guilty without making any proper investigation.

"It's the first time a Fitzgerald has ever been called a coward!" she
said to Janie.

The word rankled in her memory even more than the monitress's
high-handed manner.

"Then you must use every opportunity of showing that you're the
reverse," replied Janie. "You'll have to live the thing down. I expect
the truth will come round to Vivian's ears in course of time, and I'm
sure that she'll think far better of you than if we had gone at once to
her with a long accusation against Flossie. If Flossie herself had
offered to tell, that would have been different; but she didn't rise to
such a pitch of heroism."

"One wouldn't expect it from Flossie Taylor!" said Honor
contemptuously, as she hurried off to her music lesson.

I am afraid Honor's scales that day were anything but a satisfaction to
Fraeulein Bernhardt, the piano teacher. Her mind was so abstracted that
she kept continually playing wrong fingering, or even an occasional
wrong note in the harmonic minors. Her study was little better, and her
piece a dead failure. The mistress, with characteristic German
patience, set her to work to try to conquer a couple of difficult
phrases, through which Honor stumbled again and again, each time with
the same old mistakes, until the end of the half-hour.

"I find you not yet fit to take share in ze evening pairformance!"
sighed poor Fraeulein, whose musical ear had been much distressed by
this mangling of her favourite tarantella. "Zere must be more of
improvement before ve render ze piece to Mees Maitland. You say you not
vish to play in publique? Ach, so! Zat is vat zey all say; but it is
good to begin young to get o