Susan went softly out of the room and sat down in her old place on the stairs. So this was how Sophia Jane had spent the half-crown! How differently to anything Susan had imagined. Instead of being miserly and selfish, she was generous and self-sacrificing--instead of her own pleasure, she had preferred to give pleasure to Monsieur. And why? Because he had been kind to her. He was the only person, Susan remembered, who had ever praised Sophia Jane, or had looked at her as though he liked her; and so, in return, she had given him her very best--all she had. As she considered this she grew more and more sorry to think how she had despised her poor little companion, and suspected her of being mean; how she had always joined Margaretta and Nanna in blaming and laughing at her, and how ready she had been to say, "It's Sophia Jane's fault." She longed more than ever now to be able to tell her how sorry she was for all this, and resolved very earnestly that when she got well she would never behave unkindly to her again. Meanwhile, there was the collar--she would go and look for it at once, so that on the first opportunity she might take it to Mademoiselle Delphine. She could not give it to Monsieur, for his lessons had been discontinued since Sophia Jane's illness. She went up to the attic which she and Sophia Jane had made their play-room, and where they had had such merry games together. How deserted and cheerless it looked! Everything seemed to know that Sophia Jane was ill. It was late in the afternoon, dark, and gloomy; there was never too much light in the attic at the brightest of times, and now it was so shadowy and dull that Susan shivered as she glanced round it. There was the dusty roll of wall-paper leaning up in one corner; there was the thin, bent, old poker, which had somehow a queer likeness to Sophia Jane; there was the body of the poor doll, still headless and forlorn, stretched on the floor; and there, under the cobwebby window, was the big black box. Behind that was what she had come to seek--the collar.