To help her unfortunate room-mate seemed the first consideration to Ulyth, and she thought the end certainly justified the means. She waited until after the tea interval, when most of the girls would be playing tennis or walking in the glade; then, making sure that Lizzie was watching in the garden below, she stole upstairs to the linen-room. It was quite easy to drop from the window on to the top of the veranda, and not very difficult, in spite of the slope, to walk along to the end of the roof. Here an angle of the old part of the house jutted out, and the open window of Rona's prison faced her only a couple of yards away. She could not reach across the gap, but conversation would be perfectly possible. "Rona!" she called cautiously. "Rona!" There was a movement inside the room, and a face appeared at the window. Rona's eyes were red and swollen with crying, and her hair hung in wild disorder. At the sight of Ulyth she started, and stared rather defiantly. "Rona! Rona, dear! I've been longing to see you. I felt I must speak to you." No reply. Rona, in fact, turned her back. "I'm so dreadfully sorry," continued Ulyth. "I've been thinking about you all day. It's no use keeping this up. Do confess and have done with it." Rona twisted round suddenly and faced Ulyth. "Rona! You'd be so much happier if you'd own up you'd taken it. Surely you only meant it as a joke on Stephie? Miss Bowes will forgive you. For the sake of the school, do!" Then Rona spoke. "You ask me to confess--you, of all people!" she exclaimed with unconcealed bitterness. "Yes, dear. I can't urge it too strongly." "You want me to tell Miss Bowes that I took that pendant?" "There's no sense in concealing it, Rona." The Cuckoo's eyes blazed. Her hands gripped the window-sill. "Oh, this is too much! It's the limit! I couldn't have believed it possible! You, Ulyth! you to ask me this! How can you? How dare you?" Ulyth gazed at her in perplexity. She could not understand such an outburst. "Surely I, your own chum, have the best right to speak to you for your own good?" "My own good!" repeated Rona witheringly. "Yours, you mean. Oh yes, it's all very fine for you, no doubt! You're to get off scot free." "I? What are you talking about?" "Don't pretend you don't understand. You atrocious sneak and hypocrite--you took the pendant yourself!" If she had been accused of purloining the Crown jewels from the Tower of London, Ulyth could not have been more astonished. "I----!" she stammered. "I----!" "Yes, you, and you know it. I saw you." "You couldn't!" "But I did, or as good as saw you. Who came into our room last night, I should like to know, when Miss Lodge had sent me to bed, and slipped something into one of the blouses hanging behind the door? I'd forgotten by the morning, but I remembered when the pendant came jerking out of my pocket." "Certainly I didn't put it there!"