"Well, up till the evening, as I said, I was as much in the dark as anyone," continued Duane, and went on to narrate how she had received a visit from Bertha and a white, trembling Erica, who had confessed to her older sister what she had done, knowing that Bertha would somehow help her. Bertha, startled and horrified, had sternly enjoined the younger child that on no account must she breathe a word of it to anyone else until she, Bertha, gave her permission. Bertha meant that it should never have been found out, if _she_ could help it, no matter what happened. But she had to do something to calm the frightened, conscience-stricken child. They could tell Duane, she said, and ask her advice. She was the one Erica had meant to injure. So Bertha, in the interview that passed between the three girls, had paved the way by explaining that Erica was in trouble and wanted Duane's advice, but she must first promise not to say a word to anyone else. Duane, never dreaming what the trouble really was and thinking it was just some childish scrape Erica had been inveigled into, gave her word. Even she could not conceal her amazement and dismay when she heard the "confession." She was troubled and perplexed, more so than she had ever been in her life before, and did not know what she ought to do for the best. She tried to persuade the child to go to the Principal and confess, pointing out that Miss St. Leger could be trusted to understand and would not be harsh on her. Erica, however, in her over-wrought state, could not credit this. On the other hand, Bertha, too, was fiercely determined that, if possible, it should never be known, pointing out that Erica was but a child and had not realized what she was doing, and that in time the whole affair would die down and be forgotten. "It was Bertha's influence against mine," Duane explained, "and of course, Bertha's was the stronger." Duane, moved by the pitifulness of the child's shrinking fear and whole-souled repentance to a tenderness which, in spite of all her faults, she was evidently capable of feeling, tried to comfort her, resolving that if Erica could not summon sufficient moral courage to confess, and if she felt happier in the knowledge that her wrong-doing would never become public, she, Duane, would help keep the secret. The next day had been passed in the visit to the vicar's house, and Duane had heard nothing of the scene in the sports field, and the feeling against Kitty that had arisen. On her return she had hurried straight from an interview with Miss Carslake to Paddy's mock trial, entering late and just in time to hear the charge against Kitty. "I thought, of course," she explained, "that it was a deadly earnest affair, and I was so horror-struck that for once I lost my head completely. I don't know what I blurted out--something to the effect that I knew for certain Kitty had not done it----"