Page:Elizabeth Jordan--Tales of the cloister.djvu/276

 discovered to be innocent of the special charge made against her, and the memory of this sadly complicated the present situation. Everything pointed to her guilt, but her silence might mean injured innocence—the silence of one too proud to deny a baseless charge. They dismissed her for a time, with no outward indication of the bewildered dismay that filled their hearts, and she strolled back to her classroom to take up the congenial and temporary rôle of little sunbeam and bright, studious child.

A general sigh went up in the council-room that afternoon when the case of Mercedes Centi again came up for discussion. This time the problem was a really vital one. Should they punish her for an act not proven, or should they let her go unpunished and thus demoralize the school and encourage her to fresh outbreaks? The circumstantial evidence was against her. She had been secreting candle-ends for several days before the escapade. Sister Italia testified to finding and confiscating a number of them. But—and here at once was a point in favor of the defendant—she had taken them the very night of the bell-ringing, leaving, so far as she knew, no others in the child's possession. Again, though the steps leading to the tower showed traces of