"I must beg you to be silent, Caroline, or to leave the room, till I have done speaking to your cousin," said her mother, quietly; "the fate of your flower seems to make you forget that I have never yet permitted disrespect or any display of temper in my presence." "But what right had Ellen to touch the stand?" "None--she has both disobeyed and again tried to deceive me; faults which it is my duty to chastise, but not yours to upbraid. Answer me, Ellen, at once and briefly; your fault is known, and, therefore, all further equivocation is useless. Did you move that flower-stand?" "Yes," replied the child, almost choked with sobs, called forth the more from the contrast which her aunt's mildness presented to Miss Harcourt's harshness, and Caroline's violent anger, and from the painful longing to say that her first disobedience was not entirely her own fault. "Did you remember that I had expressly forbidden either of you to attempt to move it?" "Yes," replied Ellen again, and an exclamation at the apparent hardihood of her conduct escaped from both Miss Harcourt and Caroline. "And yet you persisted, Ellen: this is indeed a strange contradiction to your seemingly sincere sorrow for a similar fault a few months back. What did you move it for?" For full a minute Ellen hesitated, thus unhappily confirming the suspicion that when she did reply it was another equivocation. "To get a book which had fallen behind." "I do not know how a book could have fallen behind, unless it had been put or thrown there, Ellen; you said, too, that you did not replace the broken flower for the purpose of concealment. I hardly know how to believe either of these assertions. Why did you leave the room just now?" "Because--because--I knew you would question me, and--and--I felt I should not have courage to speak the truth--and I knew--you would be so--so displeased." The words were scarcely articulate. "I should have been better satisfied, Ellen, if your fear of my displeasure had prevented the committal of your first fault, not to aggravate it so sinfully by both acted and spoken untruths. Painful as it is to me in this season of festivity and enjoyment to inflict suffering, I should share your sin if I did not adopt some measures to endeavor at least to make you remember and so avoid it in future. I have told you so very often that it is not me you mostly offend when you speak or act falsely but God himself--who is Truth--that I fear words alone will be of no avail. Go to your own room, Ellen; perhaps solitude and thought, when your brother and cousins are so happy and unrestrained, may bring you to a sense of your aggravated misconduct better than any thing else. You will not leave your apartment, except for the hours of devotion and exercise--which you will take with Ellis, not with me--till I think you have had sufficient time to reflect on all I have said to you on this subject."