A moral delinquency was, however, met with the very greatest seriousness. Parents were sometimes surprised at the extraordinary pains Miss Beale would take to obtain the confession of such a fault as copying a lesson. The slightest suspicion of dishonesty was always followed up at once, but the act was never brought home to the offender until there was positive proof. Then the way would be made easy for her, the lie prevented by something like this: ‘My child, I am sure you have too good a conscience to rest with such a thing as this upon it.’ Conviction and confession of a fault made it immediately possible to show how it came about, how it might be prevented in the future. Especially in the matter of untruthfulness Miss Beale would trace the outside fault to its source, showing it to be a symptom of some corrupting force within, cowardice, vanity, or idleness. In this connection it is well worth while to read her remarkable little paper on Truth.[72] One tale of her discrimination may well be told. A class-teacher received some anonymous letters which she took to Miss Beale, naming the girl she took to be the writer. Some days passed. The teacher thought the matter forgotten, when one morning Miss Beale said to her, ‘Send —— to me. I can see by her face this morning that she will tell me all.’ Miss Beale was not disappointed either in the confession or its effects. No one could reprove like Miss Beale. Her grief, her admonition were expressed not only with so much sympathy, but with such an absolute impersonal sense of rightness and justice, that it was impossible to resent them. ‘Nothing is more touching,’ she wrote in 1898, ‘than the penitence of children, when they find that we have seen the good which is hidden, and not only the evil that comes forth; that we know, not only what is done, but what is resisted.’[73] Any who had so failed became a special care. ‘We try,’ she wrote once, ‘to make her feel there is no anger at all, but sympathy and an anxious watchfulness which will, we hope, make her more watchful over herself.’ To break the rule of silence was always regarded as a great fault. A careless pupil, conscious of breaking it only once or twice, would be surprised to find in her term’s report, ‘Disobedient to rule.’ A girl whose influence was seen to be a source of evil—a single act or conversation might be enough to prove it—was instantly removed. Careful as Miss Beale was to let no pupil go who might by any possibility be induced to stay, she never hesitated a moment in a case of this kind. The extreme seriousness with which she regarded this may be gathered from the following letter to a head-mistress:—