But Walter was too greatly enraged to be easily amenable to the mild lady’s advice.

“What do you think of this, Miss Hagford?” he cried excitedly.  “Nan Sherwood has been at our house since the first day she and Bess arrived in Chicago; yet Linda Riggs says she saw Nan taking something in a store here.”

“Hush, Walter, hush!” begged Miss Hagford.  “People will hear you.”

“Well, people heard her!” declared the angry youth.

“We know Linda Riggs for what she is,” Bess put in.  “But these other boys and girls don’t.  Grace will tell you that Linda is the very meanest girl at Lakeview Hall.”

“Oh!  I couldn’t say that, Bess,” gasped timid Grace.  “She is my guest for the evening!”

“Well, I’ll say it for you,” burst out her brother.  “Somebody should tell the truth about her.”

“So they should,” chimed in Bess.  “She’s a mean, spiteful thing!”

“Stop! stop, all of you!” commanded the governess, sternly.  “Why, this is disgraceful.”

“I guess it is—­I guess it is,” said Linda, bitterly.  “But this is the sort of treatment I might expect from anybody so much under the influence of Sherwood and Harley, as Grace and Walter are.  I tell you I saw Nan Sherwood being held by a detective in Wilson-Meadows store, because they said she had taken some jewelry from the counter.  And she cannot deny it!”

She said this with such positiveness, and was so much in earnest, that most of her hearers could not fail to be impressed.  They stared at white-faced Nan to see if she had not something to say in her own defense.  It seemed preposterous for Linda to repeat her charge so emphatically without some foundation for it.

“It isn’t so!” cried Bess, first to gain her breath.  “You know, Grace, Nan hasn’t been shopping unless you and I were both with her. That’s made up out of whole cloth!”

“You were not with her that day, Miss Smartie,” cried the revengeful Linda.  “And you see—­she doesn’t deny it.”

“Of course she denies it!” Bess responded.  “Do say something, Nan!  Don’t let that girl talk about you in this way.”

Then Nan did open her lips—­and what she said certainly amazed most of her hearers.  “I was charged with taking a lavalliere from the counter.  But it was found hanging from a lady’s coat—­”

“Where you hung it, when you saw you were caught!” interposed Linda.

“It was dreadful,” Nan went on, brokenly.  “I was so frightened and ashamed that I did not tell anybody about it.”

“Nan!” cried Bess.  “It’s never true?  You weren’t arrested?”

“I—­I should have been had the lavalliere not been found,” her chum confessed.  “Linda saw me and she told the man I was dishonest.  I—­I was so troubled by it all that I didn’t tell anybody.  It was the day I met that lady whose card I showed you, Bess. She was the lady whose coat caught up the chain.  She was very kind to me.”