Bowes looked thoughtful.

"I put you upon your honour, Ulyth, to answer this question perfectly
frankly. Have you any reason to suspect that some of the juniors have
surreptitiously been buying cakes and sweets?"

Thus asked point-blank, Ulyth was obliged to relate what she had
overheard; and Miss Bowes, determined to get at the root of the
business, cross-questioned her closely, until she had dragged from her
reluctant pupil the account of the occurrence in the garden and the
conversation with the travelling hawker-woman.

"This is more serious even than I had feared," groaned Miss Bowes. "I
thought I could have trusted my girls."

"I think most of them were ashamed of it," ventured Ulyth.

"It is just possible that Rona refuses to speak because she will not
involve her schoolfellows."

"Oh yes, yes!" cried Ulyth, clutching at any straw to excuse her
room-mate's conduct. "That's quite likely. Or, Miss Bowes, I've been
thinking that perhaps it was a queer kind of loyalty to me. You know
Rona's very fond of me, and she was quite absurdly angry because
Stephanie's pendant was to go to the exhibition and not mine. She may
have changed them, hoping it wouldn't be noticed and that mine would be
packed up, and perhaps she intended to put Stephanie's back in the
studio when the parcel had safely gone. Rona does such impulsive
things."

Miss Bowes shook her head sadly.

"I wish I could think so. Unfortunately the other circumstances lend
suspicion to a graver motive."

CHAPTER XVIII

Light

Ulyth walked from the study feeling that she had told far more than she
wished.

"I've given Rona away," she said to herself. "Miss Bowes is thinking the
very worst of her, I know. Oh dear! I wish she'd explain, and not keep
up this dreadful silence. It's so unlike her. She's generally almost too
ready to talk. If I could see her even for a few minutes I believe she
would tell me. Perhaps Miss Teddington frightened her. Poor Rona! She
must be so utterly miserable. Could I possibly get a word with her, I
wonder?"

She talked the matter over with Lizzie.

"If I ask Miss Bowes, she'll probably say no," lamented Ulyth.

"Then I shouldn't ask," returned Lizzie. "We've not been definitely
forbidden to see Rona."

"The door's locked."

"You've only to climb out of the linen-room window on to the roof of the
veranda."

"Why, so I could. Oh, I must speak to her!"

"I think you are justified, if you can get anything