"No need for you to hurry, Miss Carson," Maud called after her. "Mother's minutes generally mean hours."

And in that Maud proved to have been right, for an hour and a quarter passed before Mrs. Danvers made her belated appearance in the morning-room. But as there was a goodly supply of magazines and illustrated papers, Margaret did not find the time hang heavily on her hands.

Truth to say, she was glad to be alone, and the knowledge that such was the case depressed her very much. She had looked forward to the society of other young people as the greatest happiness earth could give her, and it was discouraging to find that the realisation of her wish was as yet bringing her very little pleasure. She felt awkward and terribly shy in their company, and she had an uneasy consciousness that they looked upon her as a poor sort of creature, and very uninteresting—what, in short, she said sadly to herself, for she was already picking up some of their expressions—they would have called a bore.

When at last Mrs. Danvers did make her appearance she was full of apologies for having kept Margaret waiting so long.

"You must blame the cook, my dear," she said cheerily, "not me. Oh, dear, I am glad to sit down!"

She sank into a low easy chair with an air of fatigue, and Margaret seeing her look round for a footstool, brought her one and placed it under her feet.

"Thank you, my dear," she said, "and now if you will get me my knitting from that table in the corner we will have a nice, cosy chat. Thank goodness my work for the day is all done!" Ten minutes spent in the kitchen assenting to all that a very excellent cook-housekeeper suggested constituted Mrs. Danvers "work for the day." "There are many things I wanted to ask you about my old friend and cousin, Miss McDonald. By the way, what do you think of the children?"

When Margaret answered that she had not yet seen them, Mrs. Danvers, after a short pause of astonishment, gave a vexed laugh. At least, to start with, the laugh was tinged with vexation; but as she continued to laugh the feeling of annoyance was merged into one of hearty amusement.

"That's Hannah all over," she said. "Hannah is jealous of you. She is their nurse, you know, and has been with them since they have been born. She's the only person who can manage them. I can't, and their mother can't, though Joanna would be very angry if she heard I had said that. But I told Hannah to bring the children down to see you here after breakfast. However, as she did not choose to do so, it is no good annoying her by saying anything about it. I will take you up to the nurseries presently, when we have had that nice little chat about my dear cousin. But Joanna," she said, reverting to her daughter and her children, "is always going in for new systems with them. At one time her theory was that they must not be spoiled by having any notice taken of them. During that period they lived entirely in the nursery. I remember I was staying there at the time, and I thought I had never enjoyed a visit to my daughter so much. Next time I went the children were being brought up in the fashion of their great-grandmothers. They were taught to say 'Ma'am' to their mother, and 'Sir' to their father, and were not allowed to sit down in their presence, and never, never to speak unless they were spoken to. I enjoyed that visit too. But the latest and the reigning idea is that they are not to be thwarted or crossed in any way, and as for being punished such barbarity is not to be thought of. If detected in naughtiness they are to be reasoned with only, and if the naughtiness is persisted in it is to be taken for granted that the small sinners are ill, and must be gently nursed into good health and goodness again."

As she listened to this Margaret came to the conclusion that their mother must be an extraordinarily silly woman, but when Mrs. Danvers went on to add that Joanna, after expounding her new theory in detail, had gone away to Norway to fish with her husband, and left her mother to find out how it worked, Margaret smiled outright.

Mrs. Danvers laughed too. "It is rather funny," she said in her good-natured way, "and the worst of it is that Joanna made me promise to give her system a fair trial, and as I never broke my word to any of my children yet, I am giving it a fair trial. And that is why, my dear, I am so glad of your help. When Miss McDonald wrote to me and asked me if I could find a holiday engagement for one of her governesses, I jumped at the chance of having you. For, I said to myself that a governess of Gertrude McDonald's would, of course, have discipline and all that sort of thing at her fingers ends."

"Of course," said poor Margaret rather feebly, as Mrs. Danvers paused not so much for a reply as to gain breath.

"Unyielding firmness without harshness on your side, implicit obedience without fear on theirs is what Joanna aims at I believe," said Mrs. Danvers cheerfully, "and it certainly sounds a delightful method. By the way, if you get on with the children, Joanna has an idea of asking you to stay with her permanently. She is going out to California next spring, and will have to look out for a governess to go with her, as, of course, she is taking the children. Would you like to go, or do you prefer school-work?"

"I—I don't know," stammered Margaret, who totally unprepared for such a proposition, did not know what answer to make. "I should have to ask El——(my friend, I mean) what she thought of it. Ask her advice, I mean."

"Quite so, quite so," Mrs. Danvers said. "But that's all in the future, of course. The first thing you have to do is to make the acquaintance of the children, and, as I said, Hannah has evidently carefully kept them up in the nursery this morning. She is devoted to them, and can't bear the idea of having to share her charge of them with a governess. So I am afraid you may have a little unpleasantness to put up with at first. But she is a good creature, and if you exercise a little tact you will soon be able to smooth her down."

"Yes," said Margaret even more feebly than before. But Mrs. Danvers was not an observant woman, and she was so far from suspecting the hidden dismay with which her new holiday governess listened to her, that later in the day she gave it as her opinion that underneath her exceedingly quiet manner Miss Carson concealed an iron will, and that the reign of stern discipline she was about to inaugurate would have an excellent effect on her grandchildren. And she was genuinely astonished at the derision with which her own children received this prophecy.



CHAPTER X

ELEANOR AT WINDY GAP

To her mingled relief and surprise, Margaret found her small pupils far less troublesome to manage than the tales she had heard about them would have led her to suppose. Daisy and David were a quaint, small couple; but though self-willed and alarmingly high spirited they were affectionate, warm-hearted children and easily ruled by love. They took an instant fancy to Margaret. Perhaps her quiet manner and prim way of speaking appealed to them after the noisy ways of their young aunts, who alternately petted and bullied them; at any rate they showed themselves gratifyingly ready to obey her lightest word.

"We think you a perfect dear," Daisy said at the end of the first morning, winding two fat little arms tightly round Margaret's neck, "and we like you, and we will be good to you, won't we, David?"

"Sure," said David, who had picked up a few Americanisms from his father's New York chauffeur, and delighted in airing them. "You can calculate on that all the time."

Hannah, too, who was a quiet, elderly, and very superior woman, liked the children's governess, and that was no small matter. She approved of Margaret's quiet manner and sedate speech, and never guessing with what a quaking heart Margaret had entered the schoolroom, set her down in her own mind as an ideal governess.

"A far better example to my lambs than Miss Maud with her noisy ways, or Miss Hilary with her sharp, sarcastic speeches, a well-brought-up young lady Miss Carson is, and no mistake either, and will teach Miss Daisy how to behave."

Though Margaret had quite enjoyed her morning with the children, she was not sorry when twelve o'clock struck and the lesson-books were put away. At that hour the children always went for a walk with Hannah, and Margaret was free not only for the rest of the morning, but for the remainder of the day as well. Certainly the post of holiday governess at The Cedars could not be called an arduous one, but such as it was it was pleasant to think that she filled it satisfactorily, and that she was quite an efficient substitute for the real Eleanor. So having seen the children put their lesson-books tidily away, Margaret ran lightly downstairs to look for some of the others. It would be nice, she thought innocently, to have a game of tennis with Maud or to take a walk with Hilary or with one of the Greens. No doubt they all knew she would be free at twelve and would be on the look-out for her. The hall and the morning-room were empty, so she went into the garden and, guided by the sound of voices, made her way down to the tennis court. Here Maud and one of the girls she had come to meet the previous evening were playing singles, while Hilary and her two cousins occupied a bench on the bank overlooking the court on the far side.

Unaware of the fact that she was interrupting the game, Margaret began to cross the court by the net, and when interrupted in her progress by a shout from Maud turned and walked up to her.

"I say, whatever do you want?" Maud said impatiently, "Don't you see we are playing?"

"Yes, and I thought I would like to play too, please," said Margaret, in shy but friendly tones. "I have finished with the children for the morning. Perhaps Hilary or one of your cousins will lend me a racquet and I will come and play on your side."

"What, in high-heeled house-shoes, and when we are in the middle of a single!" Maud exclaimed in amazement. "Here, clear out please. Take her away somebody, and let us get on with our game."

Thus summarily dismissed, and blushing crimson at the annoyance in Maud's tone, Margaret backed hurriedly off the court, and though the giggles that came from the bench whereon Hilary and the Greens sat were clearly at her expense, Margaret walked awkwardly towards them.

Neither Hilary nor Joan made any attempt to make room for her to sit down, nor to conceal their amusement at her discomfiture, but Nancy, who sat in the middle, edged closer to her sister and patted the bench invitingly.

"You evidently don't know much more about tennis than you do about billiards, do you?" said Hilary scornfully; "or you would not have strolled across the court in that fashion and interrupted the game."

"I am sorry," said Margaret miserably. Already the feeling of eager anticipation with which she had left the schoolroom to seek their society had fled, and she was heartily wishing herself back there again; "and I am afraid I have made Maud cross."

"Far too cross," said Nancy. "After all, it's nothing so terrible that you did. It wasn't as if it was a match that Maud was playing. She is only having a game with Anna."

"Fancy thinking you could play in house-shoes though," said Hilary. "Didn't the girls at Hampstead have tennis-shoes, poor things?"

"I don't know. Yes, I suppose so. I mean, Mrs. McDonald did not—there were no tennis courts," stammered Margaret, her wretchedness increasing as she met Hilary's scrutinising gaze. Surely she was not mistaken, and this time there was marked suspicion of her in Hilary's face.

"Come for a turn with me," said Nancy, who, though quite unconscious of the significance of Hilary's look and manner, was at least acute enough to perceive that her cousin was bent upon making Margaret more uncomfortable than she was already. "I haven't stirred from this seat since eleven, and unless I take some exercise I shan't be able to eat any lunch. We'll go into the kitchen garden and look for some raspberries."

"They'll improve your appetite," jeered her sister.

She waited until the two were out of hearing, and then turned eagerly to Hilary.

"Hilary," she said, "what is it? I can see you are suspicious of Miss Carson. Do tell me. Oh, how quick and clever you are! I am sure you do not like her. I believe you can read people's characters at a glance."

Hilary sniffed, a would-be modest, yet well-pleased sniff, which seemed to say that though it would not become her to endorse Joan's opinion of her talents, truth would not permit her to deny it.

"I know nothing for certain yet," she said darkly, "but I am on the watch. Miss Carson is not all she seems, mark my words."

The early dinner was rather an ordeal for Margaret. All the members of the family, including her two small pupils, who sat one on each side of her and behaved beautifully, were present, besides Anna Finch and a couple of Geoffrey's friends, motor-bicycle enthusiasts like himself, who had come over from Brighton that morning on their machines.

Had Margaret only been allowed to eat her dinner in silence she would not have found the meal as terrifying as she did. Hilary, it was, who would not permit that, for the second Miss Danvers sat opposite to her, and whenever there was a lull in the conversation she would lean across the table and ask Margaret questions about Hampstead. The questions were asked in such apparent innocence that none of the others guessed that she was trying to catch her out in her answers. But Margaret was only too miserably aware of that fact, and she wondered what it was that she could have said or done to raise suspicions about herself before she had even been twenty-four hours in the house. Hilary's sidelong glances and meaningly put questions worked upon her to such a pitch that she expected to hear her say any moment that an imposter sat at their table in the guise of Eleanor Carson. But she need not have feared such an immediate denouncement. Hilary's suspicions had by no means reached that point yet; even if they had she would not have given voice to them. She was enjoying her cat-and-mouse game far too much to wish to bring it to an end as yet, and several days went by without her doing more than making Margaret as uncomfortable as she could by sly questions and glances. Sometimes a whole meal would pass without her addressing a single word to Margaret, then, as the latter would begin to feel that her vague alarms were groundless, and that Hilary suspected nothing, sudden allusion to Hampstead, or the school where she was supposed to have taught so long, would set her trembling again.

In short, Hilary contrived to make Margaret's life a burden to her, and one night, the fourth since she had come to The Cedars, Margaret resolved that she could stand it no longer. She would make a clean breast of everything, own that she was at The Cedars under a false name, and that she had no right there at all, and go to Mrs. Murray.

The moment in which she took that resolve was the happiest she had known since she had come to The Cedars. For though she had been slow in confessing it even to herself, it was a fact that, quite apart from Hilary's quiet persecution of her, Margaret was not enjoying herself. It was quite evident to her by that time that none of the family, excepting her two pupils, and even they were to go away on the morrow to stay for a fortnight with an aunt of their father's, cared in the least for her. None of them included her in their plans or sought her society. Maud was out playing golf or tennis all day long; Hilary and Joan were inseparable, and though Nancy was kind it was only in a lazy, good-natured way that in the end counted for very little. The boys, though they were all, especially Geoffrey and Edward, quite nice to her rarely met her, except at meals, so that she could not depend upon them for companionship. And against all that Margaret had to set the constant necessity of weighing all her actions and words. It was even a strain always to have to remember that her name was Eleanor Carson.

What an immense relief it would be to be herself again, even though it meant going up to that solitary house on the downs where she would have only an old deaf lady for company!

Poor Margaret, she was terribly disillusioned, and bitterly now did she regret the hasty act that had landed her in her present predicament. She must have been mad, she thought gloomily, to have planned and carried out such a brazen piece of imposition; and how could she ever have imagined that she would have had the temerity to have carried it on for weeks and weeks. She knew now that she was incapable of carrying it on for another day, and suddenly the impulse arose in her to go straight to Mrs. Danvers and tell her her real name and confess her shameful behaviour. With that idea in her mind she even started to her feet, but paused before she had taken one step in the direction of the morning-room where Mrs. Danvers, unconscious of the bombshell that her holiday governess had been momentarily minded to throw at her feet, was enjoying her usual after-dinner nap.

It was not that Margaret's courage failed her at the thought of the astounding revelation she had to make. In her present mood confession would have been far easier to her than to continue the deception; it was the thought that she would not be acting fairly to her accomplice that stayed her steps. Eleanor must be told first that she could not go on with it, and their confession must be simultaneous. And, no doubt, Eleanor would be as glad and as thankful as she would be to change back into her proper self. Probably she, too, was finding the deception more than she could bear, and would hail the news that they were to resume their own identities with untold relief. But for one day more Margaret must continue to be Eleanor, much as she disliked the thought. But it would be only for one day more, she thought to herself encouragingly, and then she would be able to hold up her head again and not fear that every chance question was going to unmask her as a cheat and a fraud.

Although Margaret had originally planned to go and see Eleanor the day after she had come to The Cedars, the days had so far slipped past without her being able to do so. But now, as the children were going away early on the morrow, there was nothing to prevent her from going to Windy Gap as soon as she chose in the morning. And Margaret fell asleep that night resolving to ask Mrs. Danvers' permission to go for a walk on the downs directly after breakfast.

Not that Margaret need have feared that any obstacle would be placed in the way of her following her own devices. The younger members of the family seemed only too ready to let her do exactly as she chose, as long as she did not expect them to entertain her. When she came down to breakfast the next morning it was to find the big room empty save for herself. All the young ladies and all the young gentlemen had, Martin informed her, taken their breakfast to the foot of the cliffs that morning.

"My dear," said Mrs. Danvers, when a little later Margaret went up to her room to ask her permission to absent herself for the morning, "do whatever you like. It is so nice of you not to be offended with my young people for not taking you with them, but when I suggested it to Maud just as they were ready to start at five o'clock this morning, she said it was too late to wake you up then as they were just off. I said it was very naughty of them not to have thought of you in time; but there it is, my dear, they just forgot you."

"They just forgot me," Margaret repeated to herself as she went down the drive, and she sighed rather sadly. But her spirits revived when she found herself clear of the houses and on the downs.

Far down on the left the sea glittered and sparkled in the brilliant sunshine, the cliffs were of a dazzling whiteness against the bright blue sky, and in front of her and on her right stretched an apparently limitless extent of down lands. In the hollows nestled farms and small hamlets surrounded by trees, which in that wind-swept region only grew in those more sheltered situations. The air was most invigorating for, in spite of the sunshine, a fresh breeze was blowing off the sea, and this cooled the air, which otherwise might have been too hot to make the quick rate at which Margaret was walking agreeable. Mrs. Danvers' directions were easy to follow, for not only were there signposts to aid her, but when she was only half-way down the long white road which, with many curves, wound down to the shore, she could see the dip in the cliffs that gave the name of Windy Gap to the little cove at their base, and also trace the road that ran inland from it along the bottom of the valley to the little village of the same name that, well sheltered by trees, lay in the middle of it, a mile or more away from the cliff-line.

Recognising that there was then no need for her to follow the road as far as The Cove, Margaret struck across the downs to her right in the direction of the village, thus saving herself two sides of a triangle. A little grey church with a squat tower, a little grey house that was obviously the parsonage, a row of small cottages, a few isolated ones, and a farm or two made up the village, and Margaret, after wandering up and down the little main street wondering where Mrs. Murray's house was, went into the one small general shop, which was also the post-office, that the village boasted, to inquire. She was told to follow the road for another few hundred yards, and then to take the first turning to the left, which would lead her directly to Rose Cottage, which was the name of Mrs. Murray's house, and to nowhere else.

Following these instructions, Margaret presently found herself climbing a very steep, rough lane, that ended abruptly at a pair of wide gates. These opened on to a short, winding drive, and without any hesitation Margaret approached the house, intending to ring and ask boldly for Miss Anstruther. And that would be the last time, she earnestly hoped and believed, that she would be obliged to give her name as Miss Carson. The deception they had played was to end very soon now.

It was a charming house and garden that came into view as Margaret turned the last bend of the little winding drive. The house was little and the garden big, and the latter was literally ablaze with flowers. So was the house, too, but on the present occasion Margaret did not discover that.

The situation on the slope of a hill was well chosen, for though fully open to the south, the house and garden were well protected, both by trees and by the rising ground, from the cold north and the boisterous west wind. To-day, with the sun blazing overhead, it was like a veritable sun-trap, and Margaret, who was beginning to feel the effects of her long walk, looked longingly at a deck-chair that stood invitingly under the shade of a weeping ash at the further end of the lawn.

As Margaret's footsteps sounded noisily on the gravel, the chair, which was placed with its back to the house, creaked suddenly, and Eleanor's head appeared round the side of it.

When her eyes fell upon Margaret, whose hand was at that minute outstretched to lay hold of the bell, an expression of the most vivid surprise, not unmixed with consternation, crossed her face, and, making a warning sign to Margaret, she came running across the grass.

"Don't ring," she said, in a voice that was cautiously lowered. "Mrs. Murray is out, and it's no use disturbing the servants. I say, what on earth made you come up here on such a grilling day? You must be too hot for anything!"

"I thought you would have been wondering why I had not been up here before," said Margaret, feeling rather forlorn at the reception she was getting.

"Not a bit of it," returned Eleanor. "I have scarcely thought of you the last few days. I feel as if I had been Margaret Anstruther all my life!"

"And do you like it?" Margaret asked. The question slipped almost unawares from her lips, but she could not recall it, and she waited with a good deal of anxiety for the answer. She hoped it would not be in the affirmative, for if it were it would make what she had to say so very much harder for Eleanor to hear.

"Like it?" said Eleanor ecstatically. "Liking is not the word! And, oh! I have such news, such glorious, glorious news to give you! So, on the whole, I am glad you have come, although at first I was rather dismayed at the riskiness of it. But come away from here. I can take you to a quiet spot where we can have a long, long talk unheard, and unseen from the windows."

While she spoke she was piloting Margaret across the lawn, past the shady tree, in full view of the windows where she had been sitting, towards a little grass path that cut in two the wide border of gay herbaceous flowers that backed the far end of the garden, and led suddenly to a flight of brick steps which descended to a walled-in kitchen garden below. This being on a much lower level than the lawn was quite invisible from the windows. A wide path ran along beside the rock-work that banked up the lawn, and at the end of the path there was a comfortable little summer-house furnished with a table and chairs.

"I have made this snug little retreat my own," said Eleanor, as she led the way into it and invited Margaret to be seated. "I come here in the afternoons and do my lessons, and it is already quite understood by Mrs. Murray and the servants that when I am working here I do not like to be disturbed. She is very good and leaves me to myself now a lot. At first she was rather inclined to come and talk to me a good deal, but I think she sees now that I hate wasting time talking, and so lets me alone. Well, now I am sure you are longing to hear all about my arrival and my first meeting with Mrs. Murray. So I will tell you about that first, and keep my best news to the last."

If Margaret had said what was in her mind at that moment, she would have said that what she longed most to hear was herself telling Eleanor that she wanted to change back into her proper self again; but somehow, though the words were on the tip of her tongue, she could not bring herself to utter them. With a sinking heart she was beginning to realise that Eleanor, far from wanting to be herself again, would much rather remain Margaret Anstruther. And it was dreadful to think of the disappointment that she must cause her when she said what she had come to say.

"Well, now to begin at the beginning," Eleanor said, leaning comfortably back on her chair with her hands lying loosely on her lap. Margaret noticed that three fingers of her right hand were in bandages. "I can confess now what I am sure you never guessed at the time, and that is that I was in a horrid fright when I said good-bye to you at the station, and I believe at the very last minute if I could have jumped back into the train I would have done so, but Mrs. Murray was so kind that I soon got over my nervousness. Not that it would have mattered, though, if I hadn't," she added with a little laugh, "for Margaret, I found, was expected to be shy. I suppose, as poor Mrs. Murray is so dreadfully deaf, it is easier to pass myself off as you than it might otherwise have been, but certainly if I have made any glaring mistakes she has never noticed them, and if I really had been you my task could not have been simpler. Of course, the first evening she asked me a great many questions about Mr. Anstruther and your home, and your lessons, and your governess, and why the doctor had said you were to go away, and so on, and I answered them all in first-class style, for I have everything you had told me fresh in my mind. Oh, but what do you think! Our plans might have been wrecked at the outset by something neither of us had foreseen. That evening, just as we were going to bed, Mrs. Murray said to me in the quiet, low tone in which she always speaks, and which it makes it dreadfully difficult to hear what she says, that the first thing next morning I must write to my grandfather, and tell him of my safe arrival. I was dismayed, if you like, for I had no notion what your handwriting was like, or any hope of copying it if I knew, but I kept my countenance, and gave no sign of dismay. And the next morning at breakfast, while cutting a piece of bread in half, the knife slipped and I cut the three middle fingers of my right hand so badly that each of them had to be wrapped up in bandages. So you see that to hold a pen was impossible, and Mrs. Murray wrote instead of me to announce my safe arrival here."

"Oh, Eleanor!" Margaret exclaimed, "and you cut yourself on purpose."

"Of course, it was the only thing to be done; and I say I did it so well that I haven't been able to write yet. It was rather nice and clever of me wasn't it?"

"It was very clever," Margaret said, in a grave voice.

Three days ago, when they had laid this plot together, she might have been able to add that this final little touch of Eleanor's was nice, too; but somehow she could not now bring herself to utter the word. Eleanor, however, never noticed the omission, but in the vivacious tone in which she had spoken throughout, went on to give a further account of all that had happened to her since she had left Margaret at the station three days since. That she was completely happy could not be doubted. Every word she uttered showed that she was radiantly content with her new existence, and was not troubled by as much as one small single scruple as to the deception on Mrs. Murray that she was so successfully carrying out. Indeed, it was evident that she had not given that side of the matter a thought.

"But I am keeping the best part of all until the last to tell you," she said; "and that is, of course, about my voice."

"Your voice," echoed Margaret. "Oh, of course, about your singing, you mean."

She had completely forgotten Eleanor's great ambition to be a famous singer.

"You remember what I told you that Signor Vanucci said to me, that I ought to be the greatest singer of my generation, that he foresaw a splendid future before me, that my voice had infinite possibilities. But that it was, of course, quite untrained."

Margaret nodded. She remembered now.

"I can never forget those three phrases," Eleanor said in a slow, thoughtful tone, as she gazed dreamily past Margaret at the wooden wall of the summer-house over behind her. "Never. How often during the last dreary six months have I not repeated them to myself. They had been alternately my joy and my misery according as my hopes of getting proper training some day, and my fear that I never would were in the ascendant. But all that is over now, and I am a pupil of Martelli's. Do you know, Margaret, I have to pinch myself sometimes to make sure that I am awake and not dreaming. Even as I sit here telling it all to you the whole situation—you, me, Madame Martelli, and everybody seem as though they were a part of a dream, a lovely dream, but still a dream. Does it seem like a dream to you?"

"N—no, not exactly," said Margaret, with a slow shake of her head. "It all seems quite real to me. But tell me what Madame Martelli said about your voice."

"Yes, I am not telling my story properly," said Eleanor, "but the truth is that though I sit here so calmly, and talk so quietly, I am just devoured by excitement whenever I think of my good luck. Well, I can tell you what Madame Martelli said in a very few words. She was even more enthusiastic than Signor Vanucci about my voice. Far, far more. I went down to her the very first morning after I got here, you know. Mrs. Murray was rather surprised at my eagerness to start off to my lessons, she wanted instead to take me for a drive and show me the country, she said; but I told her that I would much rather go down and see the Signora at once, and so, although I believe she was a little disappointed that I would not come driving with her, she took me down to the little house where the Signora lives and left me to my fate after she had introduced us. Picture to yourself, Margaret, a little woman with hair and eyes of almost coal-like blackness, and a little sallow, eager face, and you have the once great Madame Martelli to the life. Though she has lived in England for a great many years she does not talk English very well, and her foreign accent is very strong. She thought, of course, that singing and music were only to be my secondary subjects, and that I had come to her principally to study Italian, and at first I did not undeceive her, but got out my grammar and exercise-books, and did dictations and translations as if I aspired to learn nothing more from her. For two hours we kept at it, and then she looked at her watch.

"Your grandfather wishes, too, that we do a little singing and playing," she said, and a distinct sigh of resignation came from her. "Which do you like best, the playing or the singing?"

"Singing," I answered. "I love singing, Madame Martelli, more than I love anything else in the whole wide world."

"Indeed," she said politely and kindly. "Zat is vary nice. Your grandfather, he say through Mrs. Murray to me that you have ze pretty little drawing-room voice, and would I kindly teach it. And so," again that sigh of resignation, "will you please sit down to ze piano, and sing me ze leetle song? Hey, is it not so that you have ye nice leetle voice?"

At that, Margaret, I really don't know what came over me, for supposing Signor Vanucci had been wrong, and I had no voice, she would have thought me mad, but truth to say, I simply did not feel I was risking anything when I turned, and looking at her across the big grand piano that fills up her little drawing-room, and said, "No, it is not true, I have not a nice little drawing-room voice."

"Of course she thought I was shy and modest, and was nervous at the thought of singing before her, and her face, when I went on in a calm, matter-of-fact voice, 'No, I have not a little drawing-room voice, but I have a voice which, with your training, is going to be one of the greatest and best voices that has been heard in Europe this century,' was a study."

Margaret gasped, "Oh, Eleanor, how could you! for supposing—supposing it had all been a mistake. What did she think of you?"

"I gave her no time to think of me," said Eleanor. "I simply sat down and sang, and then all she thought of was my voice. And as I had sung a scale to Signor Vanucci, I did the same for her. And as I sang I kept my eyes on her face, for somehow I was full of a glorious, careless confidence as to what her verdict was going to be. Surprise and wonder, and then a sort of rapt delight, were depicted in turn on her face, and as I sang the last note she dropped quietly on to the nearest chair and just stared at me for a moment. Then she began to talk rapidly to herself in Italian, and for a moment a horrid nervousness did seize me as to what she thought; but then she came over and kissed me, and I knew it was all right. Then with her hands on my shoulders, she drew back and looked at me. 'Wonderful! wonderful! wonderful!' she said in a sort of awed tone. And then suddenly she asked me how old I was. It was really the first coherent thing she had said. I said I was nineteen and would soon be twenty. At that she clenched her hands and flung her arms wide in a sort of despairing gesture. 'Oh, but we must work, work, work!' she said. Her pronunciation is not like that, but I can't quite get it.

"At that moment Mrs. Murray's pony-carriage drew up outside the house, and seeing us through the window she gave the reins to the man and came in. Madame Martelli fairly turned upon her in a perfect frenzy of excitement, and wanted to know why—why—why I had not been properly taught, that I had a marvellous voice, and that if I had not come to her when I did no one might ever have discovered it. Well, of course, Madame Martelli talks so fast and in such very broken English, and Mrs. Murray is so deaf, that she did not understand one-half or one-quarter of what was said to her. But though Madame Martelli must have seen that from her bewildered expression she did not mind a bit, she just talked on and on of all that I must do, and all that she would do for me. And Mrs. Murray just sat there and listened as well as she could. When Madame Martelli was quite out of breath with her excitement and the rapidity with which she had talked, Mrs. Murray said in the quiet, low tones in which she always speaks, and which sounded then like cold-water drops on a raging volcano, if there is any sense in that metaphor, which I don't believe there is, by the way:—

"'I am glad you think, then, that her voice is worth training, and that you consent to give her lessons.'"

"The very calmness of the reply nearly set off Madame Martelli again. If I hadn't been feeling pretty strung up myself, Margaret, I could have laughed at the amazement and despair depicted on her face when she found that the announcement that I had such a marvellous voice was received so calmly.

"'Worth training. I consent!' The sheer despair of getting Mrs. Murray to understand seized her, and she could only sit and gasp.

"I think Mrs. Murray grasped then that Madame was disappointed that what she said had not produced more sensation, for she said kindly:—

"'I am not really at all surprised that you are pleased with her voice, for her grandfather said she had a nice little voice, very true and sweet, and he wished her to have regular lessons. It is very kind of you to take so much interest in it.'"

"'It is a preevilege,' Madame Martelli said. 'It will give me a new interest in life.' And then she turned to me and wrung my hand again and again, and though she hurt my three cuts dreadfully, I never even winced.

"'What queer, excitable people foreigners are!' Mrs. Murray said to me placidly as we drove away; 'but I am glad, my dear Margaret, that you have a voice worth training. It is a great thing to be able to amuse oneself with music and give pleasure to one's friends at the same time.'"

Eleanor had recounted this scene with so much vivacity, accompanying her recital with various gesticulations, and imitating with what Margaret felt sure was considerable accuracy the different voices of Madame Martelli and Mrs. Murray, that in spite of her own pre-occupation she had listened to it with great interest. But when it was over, and Eleanor, still talking at a tremendous pace as if she wanted to get all she had to say told in the shortest possible space of time, had gone on to tell her various other items connected with her two days' stay in Rose Cottage, Margaret relapsed into the rather moody frame of mind that the first glimpse she had caught of Eleanor's radiantly happy face had brought upon her.

"Every morning after breakfast, and every afternoon after tea, I am to go down to Madame Martelli's house. She lives in a tiny cottage perched on the opposite side of the valley just above the church, and all my practising is done at her house. She has forbidden me to sing a note by myself at present. I read Italian and French with her too, but, as you can guess, most of the time I spend in practising. Then for the rest of the day my time is my own. Of course I am a good deal by myself, but I like that; it gives me more time to study. Oh, I can tell you I find the silence that reigns up here delightful. If you had lived in the middle of a crowd of chattering girls for the last five years you could understand that too. Oh, but it is a lovely, wonderful time that I am having now, and I shan't forget that I owe it to you."

She fell suddenly silent, and a dreamy look came into her eyes, and a smile lingered round her mouth. Margaret, noting it, knew that the smile had nothing whatever to do with her in spite of the expression of gratitude towards her to which she had just given utterance. It was in thoughts of herself alone that Eleanor was wrapped; dreams of her own rosy future were floating before the vision of her mind, and she saw herself successful, famous, her name on every one's lips, one of the world-renowned singers of the century. No wonder that in those entrancing, soaring dreams there was no room for thought of the pale, grave, silent girl beside her. But presently, the smile still lingering round the corners of her mouth, Eleanor came out of her dreams, and turning to Margaret with one of the rapid transitions of mood that Margaret found so bewildering, she began to laugh at herself.

"Do you know, Margaret," she said, "I believe I am the most egotistical person that ever existed. Here have I been raving about myself and about my future greatness, and I have not even asked you one single, solitary question about yourself. And now, having told you how very, very much I like being you, tell me how much you like being me."

But now that her opportunity to speak had arrived, Margaret could not for the moment make use of it. An odd, choking sensation came into her throat, tears gathered in her eyes, and before she could prevent it, a big drop rolled silently down her face.

"Good gracious!" Eleanor exclaimed, leaning across the little round table so as to get a better view of Margaret's face. "Is it as bad as all that?"

Still Margaret was unable to answer, unless a second tear rolling down from her other eye could be taken as an answer.

"Oh dear! oh dear!" said Eleanor, fairly aghast at Margaret's unexpected behaviour. "Whatever can be done!"

All the radiant happiness was gone from her face, and she looked utterly disconcerted and taken aback.

Then Margaret found her voice.

"Oh, I want to change!" she said, in a voice broken with sobs. "I want to be myself again."

"But you can't!" Eleanor exclaimed sharply. "That is out of the question. How can we change now?"

"By telling everybody everything," Margaret said. "They cannot do anything very dreadful to us, can they?"

Eleanor gave a short and very mirthless laugh.

"They can't do anything very dreadful to you—no," she said. Then in a perfectly expressionless voice, "You have quite made up your mind, then?"

"Oh, quite," Margaret said, eagerly relieved beyond measure to find that Eleanor had received her announcement so quietly.

"And how do you mean to set about it?" Eleanor said in the same stony sort of voice. "Am I to tell Mrs. Murray first, or are you to tell Mrs. Danvers?"

"As I am up here I could tell Mrs. Murray," Margaret answered timidly, "and then we could go down together and tell Mrs. Danvers. Oh, Eleanor, you do not know how distressing it is to me to be deceiving everybody as I am doing at present. I am sure one girl, Hilary, the second daughter, knows that I am hiding something, and she is always trying to find out what it is. She makes my life a burden to me," added Margaret pathetically. "And it does make me so unhappy to feel that I cannot look everybody honestly in the face and tell nothing but the truth. And they all laugh at me, and make fun of me, and think me so silly and shy, and Mrs. Danvers asked me last night if I would like to go to California with her as a governess because I get on so well with her children."

"Are you doing any teaching, then?" Eleanor asked.

"Yes, I am a holiday governess to a little boy and a girl. Oh, I do not mind that at all—they are very good children. It is Hilary, the second daughter, that I do not like, and though some of the boys are nice, they do not take much notice of me, and I can see they do not care for me at all. And I used to think," added poor Margaret mournfully, "that all young people of my own age would like me, and that I should enjoy myself so much in their society. But that is not the worst part of it, it is the feeling that I am in the house on false pretences, and that every time they call me Miss Carson, and I answer to the name, I am telling a lie. It is so—so horrible and dishonest."

"I see," said Eleanor slowly; "but I suppose it wasn't until you found out that you didn't like being me that you began to worry about the dishonesty of the plan."

"No, I suppose not," said Margaret rather uneasily. "But now that I have found it out, I should not care to stay there even if I were enjoying it ever so much—which," she added, "I am not."

"You have at least made that quite clear," Eleanor said drily.

"Then you do not mind our changing?" Margaret said. She found Eleanor's manner quite inscrutable. After her first passionate exclamation that it was impossible she seemed to accept Margaret's decision without any argument whatever, and yet the latter felt that the matter was by no means settled yet.

"Does it matter if I do mind?" said Eleanor. Her face was very white and her eyes gazed unflinchingly into Margaret's. The latter was frightened at the tragic despair they expressed, but she answered firmly enough.

"Yes, of course, I am sorry if you do mind very much, but I mean to confess all the same."

"Then there is nothing more to be said, is there?" Eleanor answered, and as she spoke she rose to her feet. "Come, I hear the carriage wheels on the gravel. Mrs. Murray has returned from her drive. Let us go to her at once."

She walked rapidly out of the summer-house in the direction of the flight of steps that led to the upper garden, and after a momentary hesitation Margaret rose and followed her. The path was wide enough for two to walk abreast if one of the two did not occupy the middle of it, but as that was just what Eleanor was doing, Margaret was obliged to follow behind.

Eleanor walked on in silence, apparently of the opinion that the last word had been said; but Margaret, who was looking doubtfully at the back of Eleanor's erectly held head, could not bear to think that they were to part in that constrained way.

"Eleanor!" she exclaimed impulsively, taking a quick step or two forward and laying one hand timidly on the other's arm as if she would have detained her for a moment, "I wish you would say that you were not angry with me."

"What right have I to be angry?" Eleanor said very coldly, as with a slight but decisive movement she freed her arm from Margaret's touch. "Only it would have been better for me if we had never met."

"But it is no worse for you than it is for me," Margaret said eagerly, trying again, but quite unsuccessfully, to walk beside Eleanor. "I suppose we shall both get terrible scoldings. I from grandfather and Mrs. Murray, and you from Mrs. Danvers, but they cannot go on being angry with us for always, can they? And Eleanor, if it is your singing lessons that you are minding about so much, could you not walk up here from Seabourne every day and go on with them? It is not so very far, and you have only to teach David and Daisy in the morning. All the rest of the day you are quite free."

"I should imagine that as far as Mrs. Danvers is concerned I am quite free all day long," Eleanor replied, with a little, short laugh.

"What do you mean?" Margaret exclaimed in a puzzled tone. "I do not understand."

"You didn't suppose, did you," Eleanor replied, without as much as turning her head as she still walked on, "that I was going back to The Cedars in your place?"

"Why, of course, I did. Where else would you go?"

"That I must decide presently. After lunch, probably, if I am allowed to stay here so long."

"But why won't you go to Mrs. Danvers? You were on your way there when first I met you, before all this happened?"

"Before all this happened, yes," Eleanor returned; "but do you suppose that she would be willing to have me as her holiday governess now? That I have only to go down to her house and say, 'Here I am, the real Eleanor Carson, arrived at last; I am a little late I know, but I played a trick off on you, and sent another girl in my place. Now, however, we have decided to change back into our own selves, and she has gone to her friends, and I have come to you.' It is likely, isn't it, that she would be willing to have me in her house as a governess to her grandchildren?"

"But why shouldn't she be as willing to have you as Mrs. Murray will be to have me?" Margaret said in a bewildered tone.

Eleanor shrugged her shoulder. "Because our positions are a little different, that is all. Your grandfather is Mrs. Murray's friend; this was to have been your home, and if you ran away from it for a few days you will, of course, get into disgrace on your return; but no one will dream of saying that you had not a perfect right to return, in fact they will make it their business to see that you do not run away again. But, on the other hand, The Cedars is not my home. Mrs. Danvers is not my friend, and though I should, no doubt, have got on well enough there under ordinary circumstances, it isn't likely that she will consent to take me in now. Naturally enough she will be dreadfully angry at the liberty we have taken with her."

"But just as angry with me as with you," said Margaret, who felt that in claiming her share of the blame she lessened Eleanor's.

"Oh, yes," Eleanor agreed indifferently, "that is quite likely. But then, you see, her anger will not matter to you as much as it will to me. It does not take away your bread-and-butter and your bed to sleep in, does it?"

By that time Eleanor had reached the flight of steps and she began to mount them. But Margaret had come to a pause at their foot, her progress arrested by Eleanor's last words.

For the first time she had grasped what the full result of confession would be to Eleanor, and her dismay deprived her for the moment of all power of speech.

"Wait!" she cried then in a stifled voice. "Oh Eleanor, wait!"

"What for?" Eleanor returned impatiently. But glancing downwards and seeing that Margaret had sunk on to the lowest step and had covered her face with her hands, the hard, contemptuous expression her face had worn relaxed somewhat.

"Don't bother about me, Margaret," she said, "I really don't care two straws about going to The Cedars. From what you have told me the Danvers do not appear to be a very attractive family, and I painted my own plight blacker than I need have done. I have got somewhere to go. The empty school at Hampstead is open to me for the rest of the summer holidays. Miss Marvel gave me leave to spend them there if I had nowhere to go, so I shall be all right. So, for goodness sake," she added, unable to keep the impatience she felt at the weakness Margaret was displaying out of her voice, "don't cry about me."

"I'm not crying," Margaret said in a muffled tone, due to the fact that her face was still buried in her hands. "I'm thinking. Please do not speak to me for a minute."

With a little shrug of her shoulders Eleanor fell silent, and she surveyed Margaret's bowed shoulders as she sat huddled up on the step beneath her with a touch of scorn in her glance. So Margaret had difficulty even in summoning up enough courage to go in and face Mrs. Murray. What a poor thing it was! she thought. But Eleanor was conscious of no anger against her weak-kneed confederate who was leaving her so badly in the lurch. She was not to blame for her feeble vacillating nature, that could not even adhere for three days to the plot she had entered upon so joyously. Eleanor was only angry with herself for having put faith in her. And what would Madame Martelli say when she heard that her pupil was not her real pupil at all? But of her, and of all she would lose by going away, Eleanor could not trust herself to think. With an effort she made her mind a blank and stood drearily silent waiting for Margaret to get up and follow her to the house. Of what Mrs. Murray would do or say when she was told that the girl she had received into her house, and to whom she had shown every kindness in her power, was not her old friend's granddaughter but a sheer impostor, Eleanor never even thought. If she had taken Mrs. Murray's probable feelings into consideration in any way, she would merely have supposed that indignation at the liberty that had been taken with her would swallow up any kindly liking that she might have been beginning to feel for her.

The silence that had fallen between the two girls had lasted fully three minutes before Margaret lifted her face from her hands and rising to her feet, faced Eleanor.

"I have thought over everything you have said, and I find I cannot do it after all."

"But you have told me that already," Eleanor said, restraining her impatience with difficulty. "Come along and let us get it over."

"No, no; you do not understand. I mean I cannot turn you out from here. I will go on with it. I had not thought about Mrs. Danvers not taking you in my place; but I believe you are right, and that she would not. So I shall go on being Eleanor Carson until—until—well, I suppose until we are found out."

Eleanor shook her head. "You will change your mind again to-morrow," she said curtly.

Margaret flushed. "No," she replied steadily, "I will not. You may believe me when I say I shall not. You see, Eleanor, when I first wanted so much to be in your place and go to The Cedars I had no idea what was before me. I was disappointed when I found out, and so, of course, my wish was to change back into myself again; and I never thought of the effect my change of purpose would have upon you. But this time I am doing it with my eyes open."

There was a new ring in Margaret's voice, a look of resolution on her face that was strange to it, and Eleanor, glancing at her in amazement, realised that she was showing a latent strength of purpose that had perhaps for the first time in her sheltered, uneventful life been called out in her. Nevertheless she refused to believe that Margaret really meant what she said.

"But the dishonesty you spoke of just now," she said. "What about that; and your dislike to the deception we are both practising? That remains the same."

"I know," said Margaret in a low tone, a shadow crossing her face and dimming the look of courageous resolve it wore. "But that is unavoidable. It seems to me now that it would be quite as bad, if not worse, to break faith with you."

Still Eleanor did not give way. Her conscience did not need to speak very loudly for her to hear it telling her that in accepting Margaret's offer she was doing a very wrong thing. In her heart of hearts she had known all along that their plot was inexcusable from every point of view, and that when it came to be known most of the blame would be laid at her door, not only because she was the elder and the more worldly wise of the two, but because most people would consider that she had been the one to profit most by the exchange. But she had been carried away by Margaret's urgent pleadings and persuasions and had finally suppressed her misgivings and consented to the plot. Now, however, the case was altered. It was only out of a spirit of pure self-sacrifice that Margaret was urging her to continue to bear her name, and she knew that in yielding she would be guilty of great selfishness.

"Think of your singing lessons with Madame Martelli," said Margaret, who was quietly watching the struggle with herself to which Eleanor's changing face bore eloquent witness.

That clenched the matter. Eleanor gave in; but this time it was she who found it difficult to meet Margaret's eyes.

"Oh, Margaret," she said, "if you appeal to my ambition my better self goes under. I accept, then; but you're a brick, a perfect brick, and I feel too mean for words."



CHAPTER XI

A PRACTICAL JOKE

Three weeks had passed since Margaret had paid her first visit to Eleanor at Windy Gap, and during those three weeks she had kept steadily to her word and was impersonating Eleanor as well as she could at The Cedars. And as the days went by her task grew easier. She seemed to have slipped into her place as a member of the household, and though it was a very insignificant niche indeed that she filled, she did not mind that at all, for she was aware that the more she kept in the background the less chance there was of her secret being discovered. Perhaps on the whole, too, she was happier than she had been during the first three or four days. Of course, as she told herself seriously, she ought not, when once her eyes had been opened to the wrongfulness of the deceit she was practising, to have known a single happy moment, but somehow she found it difficult always to feel ashamed and contrite, especially when she was playing croquet with Edward. For in return for some lessons in French conversation she was giving him he had offered to teach her croquet, and though Margaret had been afraid that she was far too stupid to learn any game, she was making astonishing progress under his tuition, and Edward was already beginning to boast of the prowess of his pupil. And so, for the first time in her life, Margaret fell under the fascination of a game, and when she had a mallet in her hand it is to be feared that the delinquency of her conduct ceased to trouble her.

Fat, chuckling Nancy, too, who seemed to be always brimming over with good nature and good spirits, frequently sought her society, and Margaret found it even more impossible to brood secretly over her misdeeds in Nancy's society as when she was playing croquet. Of Maud she saw very little. Sometimes for days together the eldest daughter of the house scarcely spoke to her, vouchsafing her only the most careless and hasty of nods as morning and evening greetings. Maud intended to be neither rude nor unkind. The children's holiday governess simply did not interest her, that was all, and as for going out of her way to amuse or entertain her, Maud's blue eyes stared amazedly at her mother when one day Mrs. Danvers ventured to suggest that perhaps Maud might take more notice of Miss Carson.

"For I really am afraid she is having a very dull time here," said Mrs. Danvers, her tone taking on a rather apologetic note as she encountered the impatient expression on Maud's face. "I am sure I don't know what she would do if it wasn't for Nancy and Edward."

"Well, with them to knock around with, and the kids to teach when they come back, she ought not to find time hang heavy," Maud said carelessly. "But as for asking me to take her about, why, mother, I simply couldn't. The day isn't half long enough as it is for me to do all I want to do. And after all, she wouldn't find it a bit amusing to come about with me. Fancy her sticking down for hours at the club watching me playing tennis, for that is what I am doing this afternoon, for instance. Besides, she is so dreadfully slow. She bores me awfully."

"My dear," said her mother, "though you all find Miss Carson so slow just because she knows nothing about tennis, or tennis people, or cricket averages, or the difference between Rugby and Association football, I think she is a very nice girl indeed, so gentle and so unselfish. David and Daisy just love her, and I know if I want any little thing done for me, a note written, or flowers put in water, or any little things of that sort, I'd sooner ask her to do it for me than either you or Hilary."

"Well, and so she ought to make herself useful," said Maud, turning restive at the merest hint of criticism from the mother who usually had nothing but praise for her daughters. "After all, that is what she is here for. She is paid for that, isn't she?"

"I am paying her nothing," Mrs. Danvers said.

"Well, she gets her board and lodging, anyhow, and a better time into the bargain than she would be getting grilling away in an empty house at Hampstead," Maud retorted. "And I think she ought to be jolly thankful to be here."

This conversation was taking place in the morning-room by the open French window of which Maud had stood while carrying on her share of it, and her last speech had been uttered with so much vigour that as her back was partly turned to the room she had not heard the door open. And though her mother coughed once or twice in an agonised way, it was not until she had quite finished all she had to say that Maud swung round and saw Margaret standing with a pile of letters in her hand by her mother's chair.



"I have finished these, Mrs. Danvers," she said quietly; "is there anything else you would like me to do?"

Margaret had certainly gained in self-possession since she had come to The Cedars. A fortnight ago if she had heard a remark of that sort about herself she would have rushed in tears from the room, but now she seemed to guess intuitively that the right thing and the kindest thing to do was to pretend not to have heard it. Certainly from her manner Maud would never have guessed that her speech had been overheard. Nevertheless, she knew that Miss Carson could not have failed to hear every word, and flushing darkly even through the sunburn of her cheeks, she fled out of the room by the window, literally without a word to say for herself. And when Mrs. Danvers attempted an apology on her daughter's behalf it was Margaret's turn to show embarrassment.

"Please, please," she said earnestly, "do not think that I mind what Maud said. You are all very kind to me, and Maud is quite right. It is much nicer here than it would be in an empty house in Hampstead."

"That reminds me, my dear," Mrs. Danvers said. "Sit down here beside me, and let us have a nice cosy chat about your future. What are you going to do when you leave me at the end of the holidays? Are you going back to the school?"

"Yes—yes; I—think so," said Margaret, beginning to stammer and get red as she invariably did when Hampstead was mentioned. "At least, I—I don't know."

"Well, I may be mistaken of course—thank you, my dear, if you will just reach me my knitting, I can always talk so much better when I am knitting. Well, as I was going to say, I have an idea that you would be much happier teaching in a family than in a school. And I do wonder why I cannot persuade you to let me write to my daughter, Mrs. Lascelles, about you. I believe when she hears how much the children like you she would be only too pleased to take you out to Los Angelos for a few years. She would give you L50 a year—and your travelling expenses, of course. It is a chance, I assure you, that many girls in your place would jump at, for it is not, my dear, as if you were very highly certificated, you know. She will have a lovely house out there, for her husband is a very rich man, and they will treat you with every kindness and consideration. Now may I write to her and say that you would like to go?"

Several times already in the course of the past few weeks had Mrs. Danvers broached this subject to Margaret, but the latter had always hitherto been able to avoid giving her a direct answer as to why she was not willing to take the post. But what a thousand pities it was, Margaret thought, that Eleanor could not accept it. Once the wild idea had occurred to Margaret that she ought to accept it in Eleanor's name, and manage somehow to change places with her at the very last moment—on board the ship, even, perhaps; but fortunately she had seen the utter folly of that notion before it had taken firm route in her mind. She did not even know if Eleanor would have cared to go to Los Angelos had the chance been offered to her, for though she had seen Eleanor twice since the day on which she had first gone to Windy Gap, she had not been able to broach the subject to her. For on both occasions Eleanor had been so full of her own news, and their meetings had been of necessity so brief, that by the time Eleanor had poured out all she wanted to say the moment had come for them to part.

Margaret felt very much older than the girl who had left her grandfather's house three weeks ago. A great deal of experience had been pressed into those three weeks, and she had learned many things. Among them she had learned what perhaps at the time she had scarcely believed that there was, as Eleanor had said bitterly, a good deal of difference in their respective positions, and that an escapade which could not be visited very seriously on one might affect the other rather disastrously. Margaret knew now that Mrs. Danvers, good-natured as she was, would certainly have refused to take Eleanor in her place if she, Margaret, had carried out her intention of confessing everything. But in spite of that knowledge she still clung to the hope that the post at Los Angelos, which was being so warmly pressed upon the false Eleanor Carson, might eventually be offered to the real one! And so, if only for the sake of keeping the place open to Eleanor, she felt that she could not refuse it outright. What Eleanor meant to do when the holidays were over and they had to take their own names again, Margaret did not know. As far as she could judge from their brief, stolen interviews at Windy Gap, Eleanor continued to be radiantly happy there and to be earning golden opinions from Madame Martelli, and to be absolutely untroubled by any thoughts beyond the immediate present. The fact that she could not be Margaret Anstruther for ever never seemed as much as to enter her head. She gave no thought to the future at all. And of course, Margaret reflected, if she expected to be a celebrated Prima Donna by the end of the summer holidays, that was all right, but if not, did she intend to stay on at Windy Gap indefinitely and send her, the real Margaret, back to the school in her place? If such a thing were possible, Margaret felt sure that Eleanor would despatch her there with the utmost cheerfulness, and consequently Margaret was deeply thankful that such a course was not feasible, for Eleanor could hardly hope to pass another girl off as herself in a school where she had lived for the last seven or eight years. What, then, did Eleanor mean to do?

"My dear," said Mrs. Danvers reproachfully, breaking in upon Margaret's perplexed musings, "you are not listening to a word that I am saying, and what I want to have from you is a plain answer to the question why you refuse to go to Los Angelos."

"I—I could not leave England," Margaret answered. "I—I should not be allowed to."

"But, my dear, I understood from Miss McDonald that both your parents were dead and that you are absolutely alone in the world. Who, then, has authority over you? Unless," she added, a sudden look of enlightenment coming to her face, "you are engaged to be married. Is that it?"

"Oh, no," said Margaret, "I am not engaged to any one. It is no one of that sort at all."

"Then there is some one whom you wish to consult first. Now, who is it?"

By that time Margaret's confusion would have attracted the attention of any one a degree more observant than Mrs. Danvers, but she saw nothing suspicious in it; she was only bent on persuading Margaret to change her mind. As she said, it seemed such a pity for Miss Carson to stand so obstinately in her own light, for on the face of it a pleasant post and L50 a year was better than L20 in a second-rate school.

"There is no one who I would have to consult exactly," said Margaret, seeking vainly for a way of escape out of the tight corner into which she had blundered, "only—only I could not go."

"But, my dear," repeated Mrs. Danvers, "I have it in your own words; you said just now that you would not be allowed to leave England."

"No; yes, I mean," said Margaret, whose confusion was increasing so rapidly that by that time she had very little idea what she was saying. "I—I am sure I should be prevented. By the end of the holidays you—you may not like me any longer, and not wish me to go."

"Now what a very strange idea for you to take into your head," said Mrs. Danvers placidly. "Isn't that a strange idea Miss Carson has taken into her head, Hilary—that by the end of the summer holidays we may not like her any more?"

For just as Margaret had entered the room unperceived by Maud a few minutes back, so Hilary had now come in unheard by Margaret, and had been standing where Maud had stood—half in and half out of the window.

"Very strange," said Hilary, sending a swift glance at Margaret's averted face; "was it meant as a prophecy?"

Margaret was saved the necessity of an answer, for at that moment Edward, who was knocking the balls about on the croquet lawn, shouted to her to come and have a game; and thankfully enough Margaret fled through the open window.

"Her manners are rather casual to you, aren't they, mother?" said Hilary, flinging herself down in the easiest chair in the room, and taking up the local paper, which had been brought in by Martin a few minutes before.

"Oh, my dear, I don't mind," said Mrs. Danvers; "I am really getting quite fond of her. She left in a hurry that way just now, I expect, because she didn't like your little sneering speech at her. You know you have rather a sharp, unkind way with you sometimes, Hilary. Why don't you get on better with her?"

"Because I don't like her," Hilary said curtly.

"But, my dear, why not?"

"Because I don't. I heard you persuading her to go to Los Angelos just now," she added. "Did she say she would go?"

"No; I can't get her to say she would like to go, nor yet to say she won't go," said Mrs. Danvers. "Now I should have thought it was a chance she would have jumped at. But no; girls are so queer and independent nowadays, there is no accounting for them."

"It is very ungrateful of her when you have been good enough to bother about it," said Hilary, who, though she was delighted to hear that so far the post in her sister's household was unfilled, for she cherished dreams of going out to California with Mrs. Lascelles herself, would not let slip the opportunity of running Margaret down to any one who would listen. "Did she say why she wouldn't go?"

"Well, she did and she didn't," returned Mrs. Danvers, actually laying down her knitting for a moment as a recollection of the embarrassment Margaret had shown returned to her. "As far as I can gather, it is because she would not be allowed to do so by somebody or other, but who that somebody was she did not clearly explain to me."

By a few dexterous questions Hilary got her mother to repeat the gist of the conversation that had just taken place between herself and the holiday governess, and when she had finished there was a queer little gleam in Hilary's eyes that Margaret would not have liked to have seen.

"She would not be allowed to go, and when asked why not, had said that she would be prevented." Hilary turned these phrases over in her mind, and as soon as she could do so unperceived, wrote them down in a little note-book that she carried in her pocket.

For though she had now given up the practice she had originally started of plying Margaret with embarrassing questions, and letting it be plainly seen that none of the embarrassment Margaret showed at them was lost upon her, the watch she kept on her every look and action, though secret, was none the less vigilant. Perhaps even more so than it had been at the beginning of Margaret's stay, for Hilary was so fascinated by her new occupation of amateur detective that almost every word Margaret uttered, even down to a request that the salt might be passed to her at table, was entered in that little note-book. She blamed herself bitterly, she told Joan, for having undoubtedly put Margaret on her guard to start with; it was a false step, she said with a frown, that it might take her weeks and months to retrieve. "But she will be gone by that time," said Joan, "so it won't be much use retrieving it then."

Hilary retorted that she had been speaking in a general sense, and then changed the subject quickly lest Joan should discover how little sense of any sort the answer contained.

Undoubtedly the relief that Margaret experienced when Hilary ceased to cross-examine her at meal-times had much to do with her ceasing to dislike her life at The Cedars as vehemently as she had done at first, and so cautious was Hilary not to let Margaret suspect the close observation under which she still kept her, that Margaret had almost come to believe that she must have been mistaken in ever supposing that Hilary knew she had something to hide.

Could Margaret have had a glimpse at the pages of that note-book, however, she would have been quickly undeceived on that point. One entry alone, which had been made only a few days before, would have filled her with dismay. It occupied several pages and was headed, "The Clue of the Handkerchief."

The incident to which this sensational headline referred had taken place the previous Sunday afternoon, when most of the members of the family had been sitting in deck-chairs, or lying on rugs, under the shade of the big cedars on the lawn which gave the house its name. Some of the party were reading, others were frankly sleeping, when the quiet that reigned had been disturbed by Nancy, who came running over the grass waving a handkerchief over her head. "Who's the owner of this pretty thing, this pretty thing, this pretty thing?" she sang, to the tune of "Here we go round the mulberry bush." Geoffrey, who had been sound asleep, woke, and groaned aloud.

"Oh, go away, Nancy," he said; "can't you see that we are all reading?"

"I can't say I can," she retorted, glancing laughingly at his book, which lay face downwards on the grass beside him. "And I want to discover the owner of this handkerchief with the initials 'M. A.' on it."

"I am," said Margaret, as, without pausing to reflect, she stretched out her hand for it.

"Oh, Miss Carson, Miss Carson," said Nancy, dangling her prize in the air before dropping it on to Margaret's lap; "whose handkerchief have you been stealing? 'M. A.' are not your initials."

Too late Margaret realised her mistake, and as she had done on the day when she had failed to answer to her assumed name, she sent a quick, apprehensive glance round the circle of faces to see if any one had noticed her error. It appeared no one had, not even Hilary, on whose face Margaret's uneasy glance rested last and longest. But Hilary's eyes were fixed steadily on the pages of her book, and with a sigh of relief Margaret slipped the handkerchief into her pocket. Little did she think that when a quarter of an hour later Hilary rose and strolled slowly away, it was to seek a retired corner, and under that startling headline to make an extensive entry in the note-book.

But though it gave Hilary sincere satisfaction to be able to note that Miss Carson laid claim to a handkerchief that was obviously not hers, she was not able to deduce much from the discovery. However, she felt convinced that she was laying the train to find out a great deal later on, and as soon as she had collected a sufficient number of suspicious facts, they would surely explain themselves.

When, as it often did, Margaret's conscience grappled very strenuously with her, and told her that however much she might try to gloss over the truth, she was behaving very badly to three people—to her grandfather, to Mrs. Murray, and to Mrs. Danvers—poor Margaret would urge in her own extenuation that though she had entered into the scheme entirely for her own amusement she was now carrying it on solely to please Eleanor, and that, wrong as it was, no doubt, to go on with it, it would have been both cowardly and unkind of her to have thrown it up and by so doing deprive Eleanor not only of the singing lessons by which she set such store, and for which alone she had consented to the exchange, but a home for the summer holidays.

"Her honour rooted in dishonour stood. And faith unfaithful kept her falsely true."

Those lines sprang unawares to Margaret's mind one day when she was rather sadly reviewing the position in which she had placed herself, and they appeared to her to fit the situation so exactly that they were frequently in her thoughts, and Hilary, to her intense gratification, heard her murmur them to herself one day when she thought herself alone. The quotation was one copied into the note book under the heading, "A Guilty Conscience Speaks."

"Is there anything interesting in the Gazette?" asked Mrs. Danvers, as Hilary idly opened the sheets of the local paper and spread them out on her knee.

Hilary happened to be in one of her most irritable humours that morning; even the faithful Joan found no pleasure in her society and had gone off to bathe with Nancy and Maud. She said it was the heat that made her feel slack and tired, and her mother said anxiously that she was afraid she did too much, whereat Hilary laughed sardonically, for no one knew better than she that she did nothing at all from morning to night. Why, even Nancy, who at least ate chocolates whenever she could get them, and read novels assiduously all day long and in bed too, might with justice be said to lead a busier life than she did. But, though Hilary often felt vaguely dissatisfied at the way in which she dawdled through the days, she had not strength of mind to bestir herself to pass them otherwise. After all, what was there for her to do? she asked herself irritably. She was supposed to have finished her education, and though she was dimly aware that she was shamefully ignorant, there seemed no especial object in her getting out her lesson-books and poring over them by herself.

But it was not the thought of her neglected opportunities that was making her so peevish this morning. She was cross because she could make nothing out of the number of suspicious facts that she had collected about Margaret. Of what use was it to have a note-book crammed full of well-grounded evidence that Miss Carson was an impostor of some sort if she could not gather from all the mass of material she had collected in what way she was imposing on them. It was enough, she thought, to make any one cross. And unless she could discover something definite against Miss Carson, Joanna would take her out to Los Angelos with her. But that, Hilary told herself with a little spasm of inward anger, should never come to pass.

"Hullo, Hilary! got the Gazette?" said Jack who, followed by Noel, and indeed the two boys were never very far apart, strolled through the window at that moment. "After you with it, I say."

"I have only just begun it myself," said Hilary, coolly tightening her hold upon it, "so I am afraid you will have to wait."

"Well, it didn't look to us from the garden as though you were reading it at all," grumbled Jack, "so you might just as well hand it over to us. We want to take it into the garden and see if there is anything in it about——"

"About the cricket at the Park," put in Noel quickly.

"Well, you needn't have snapped me up so quickly," grumbled Jack to his brother, but in so low a tone that neither Mrs. Danvers nor Hilary heard what he said.

"Well, if there is anything about the cricket I haven't come to it yet," said Hilary, beginning to enjoy the possession of the paper now that it was desired by some one else. "There is a lot about a big fancy fair that Sir Richard and Lady Strangways are going to have at Wrexley, and about the Regatta, and the dividends that the pier expects to get this half-year from the roller skating, and the new play at the theatre, and the usual lists of people staying at the hotels and boarding-houses. Who on earth ever reads them through, I wonder? But oh, I say!" she exclaimed suddenly, as turning over a page her eyes lighted on a column, half of which was taken up with big headlines that occupied the middle of the sheet. "I say, what do you think! There has been another burglary. That makes the third within the last three weeks. Colonel Baker's house was broken into last night, and all his silver plate was stolen, beside a most valuable old bronze Etruscan vase, two cases of family miniatures, and a collection of gold and silver coins. It——"

She was interrupted by a startled exclamation from Jack. "You don't mean to say that that is in the paper already!" he ejaculated.

"Why, did you know about it before, then?" said Hilary, eyeing her two brothers in surprise. "When did you hear about it? Have you seen Tommy this morning?"

"No, we have not seen Tommy to-day, and how could we have heard about it?" said Noel promptly. "What Jack meant to say was, has there really been another burglary already?"

Seabourne had certainly been unfortunate in the matter of burglaries of late. There had been three within as many weeks. One had taken place at Walker's, the principal jewellers in the High Street; another at the Grand Hotel, where a popular London dancer, Cora Anatolia by name, had been robbed of all her jewellery; and now this one of which Hilary had just read, when Colonel Baker's house, Chesham Lodge, had been broken into. And in each case the thieves had got clear away.

Naturally enough the police considered that all these burglaries had been perpetrated by the same gang; but in that they were wrong, for Master Tommy Baker, aided by his two chums, Noel and Jack Danvers, had committed the burglary at Colonel Baker's house the preceding evening as a practical joke.

It was perhaps one of the most unpremeditated burglaries that had ever taken place. He and the two young Danvers had spent the previous evening at the theatre, and as their road home lay in the same direction the two latter had accompanied Tommy as far as his gate. There Jack had remembered that Tommy had promised to lend him a book, and the two boys walked up the short drive with him intending to wait at the door while Tommy went in to get the book. As they turned the corner of the drive the light from the open study window streamed out on to the gravel, and they caught sight of Colonel Baker reclining sound asleep in an armchair. The hall door was likewise wide open.

"I say," Jack had exclaimed, "your house would be an easy one to burgle, wouldn't it? Half a dozen burglars could sneak right in under your father's very nose and go off with anything they fancied."

"Well, let's burgle it!" Tommy exclaimed light-heartedly. "It would be a ripping good joke. Fancy father's face in the morning." And thereupon Jack and Noel entering gleefully into the scheme, the three boys had crept silently into the house, gone as silently under Tommy's guidance from room to room, snatching up as they went the most valuable things on which they could lay hands.

It really was all done literally on the spur of the moment, and scarcely five minutes after the mad idea had entered Tommy's head the three boys stood in a dark corner of the drive with their booty, consisting of table silver, some valuable miniatures, and a collection of gold coins, securely tied up in a gaudy gold-embroidered Indian tablecloth that Tommy had taken from the drawing-room. The Colonel still slept peacefully.

"Now to hide it," said Tommy, "we'll bury it in a corner of your garden." Shaking with laughter, and wildly elated at the success of their mad prank, they very nearly ran, as they were leaving Chesham Lodge, straight into the arms of a policeman, who, with slow and solemn tread, was pacing down the road. That narrow shave calmed them somewhat, and probably there was not one of them who did not feel at that moment that they were actual burglars. At any rate, their progress from Chesham Lodge was attended with the utmost caution and with a show of mystery that must infallibly have aroused deep suspicion had they met any one.

"Why go to the fag of burying the swag?" said Tommy once they were safe within the shelter of The Cedars gates. "Let's take it to one of your bedrooms. Besides," he added; as if this were quite an afterthought, as indeed it was, "I don't want to spoil the things, and burying them might damage the miniatures. Let's shove them into a drawer in your room. Better go on first, Jack, and see if the coast is clear."

It was then about a quarter past ten, and most of the Danvers family were still in the billiard-room. Mrs. Danvers and Margaret, however, were in the drawing-room, and Edward had just gone up to bed.

When Jack came back with his report another short consultation was held. Edward's having gone up to bed made it impossible to hide their booty in any of the boys' bedrooms.

"What about your spare bedroom?" said Tommy; "you've got a biggish one, I know."

"Miss Carson is sleeping there," said Jack. "But I tell you what, she's not using the dressing-room. I know, because the girls keep some of their swaggerest dresses and things there. And there are heaps of empty drawers. So let's shove this thing into one of them."

Having reached the dressing-room unobserved, and closed the door and turned on the light, they looked round for a safe hiding-place. And that was not easily found. The drawers, far from being empty, were full either of blouses laid away in tissue paper, or of furs smothered in camphor.

The hanging wardrobe, too, was full of dresses, and the drawer beneath of hats.

"Oh, bother!" said Tommy crossly, "what an endless amount of room girls seem to want for their things!" Then suddenly his expression changed and he dived under the bed and dragged out a small trunk.

"The very thing. What luck! It's quite empty, and evidently hasn't been used for ages, the lid is all covered with dust. Probably no one even knows it is here. Shove in the bundle. Shall I lock it? Yes, I think I will. Then if any prying housemaid comes along and wants to look inside she won't be able to."

He slipped the key into his pocket, and the three boys left the room.

But mad as this practical joke was, the idea to which it had given rise in Hilary's mind was even more outrageous. For she had taken it into her head that Margaret was connected with the burglaries; and that when she was still far from guessing that the proceeds of one of them were actually locked up in her trunk. Hilary's suspicions were founded upon nothing more tangible than the fact that Margaret's cheeks were unusually pink that morning when the burglaries were being discussed. And she forgot that Margaret had just come in from playing croquet in the sun without a hat.

For some days Tommy, and in a lesser degree Noel and Jack, enjoyed themselves hugely. Colonel Baker was not the man to sit down tamely under his loss, and he stormed at the police for not restoring his property, interviewed the editors of the local papers, offered rewards for the apprehension of the thieves, and generally made a great stir in the matter. Presently Noel and Jack began to fear the consequences of their rash act, and they urged Tommy to smuggle his father's property out of their house and into his own. But Tommy turned a deaf ear to them, would not give up the key, and said they must keep up the joke a little longer. Then, just as Noel and Jack were about to declare that they had had enough of it, Tommy received an unexpected invitation to Scotland, and in the hurry of his departure went off with the key in his possession. So, greatly to their annoyance, the Danvers boys found themselves compelled to leave the things where they were.



CHAPTER XII

ELEANOR MEETS MARGARET'S AUNT

In spite of the liking that both Edward and Nancy had come to show for her society, Margaret often felt very lonely at The Cedars, far more lonely than she would have believed it would be possible for her to be in a big household of lively boys and girls. Edward was a boy of many occupations and had much to do besides playing croquet with her, and Hilary often claimed Nancy's companionship even when she did not particularly wish for it just for the spiteful pleasure of depriving Margaret of it. So that Margaret was thrown very much on her own resources—so much so, indeed, that she sometimes wondered with a touch of wistfulness if she was any gayer in the midst of this merry, chattering crowd of young people than she had been in the silent old house that she had left so gladly one short month ago.

But, at any rate, her health had improved in a marked degree since she had come to Seabourne. That was, no doubt, due to the fact that, encouraged to do so by Mrs. Danvers, Margaret spent much of her time out of doors. And as she had discovered that the afternoon was the best time to visit Eleanor, Margaret generally started for Windy Gap directly after lunch, and the pure, breezy air of the downs acted as an excellent tonic.

And Eleanor, now that she knew that Margaret had no intention of ousting her from her quarters at Rose Cottage, always welcomed her warmly, and many were the long conversations that the two girls enjoyed in the little arbour in the corner of the kitchen garden that had witnessed their first momentous interview.

Margaret could reach Windy Gap now in a little under an hour, for she had found out many short cuts across the grass, by means of which she avoided the long, twisting high-road that ran by the edge of the cliffs altogether. And by leaving the steep lane that led from the little village in the hollow up to Rose Cottage before it brought her to the front gate she could skirt below the wall that enclosed the domain and enter the kitchen garden by a side gate without coming in sight of the windows at all. It was Eleanor who had shown her this mode of entry and who had also told her that the early hours of the afternoon between two and four were the ones on which Margaret could most surely count on finding her alone, for Mrs. Murray always took a nap after lunch and was not visible again until tea-time. If Margaret found her days at The Cedars empty and somewhat long, Eleanor up at Rose Cottage had nothing at all to complain of in that respect.

"My dear Margaret," she said one day, "you must have led a strenuous life from your youth up if, even when you are supposed to be taking things easy, you have had such a course of study, as I am compelled to pursue in your place, mapped out for you. If your grandfather had wished you to become a naturalised Italian he couldn't have been keener on your acquiring a thorough knowledge of the language. He never writes to me, but I know he wrote a long letter to Mrs. Murray the other day hoping that I was getting on with my studies and that neither she nor Madame Martelli permitted me to mope and dream my time away in the profitless, silly way that had of late become habitual to me, and which was admirably adapted, if the habit were encouraged, to weaken my brain permanently."

Margaret coloured faintly as Eleanor quoted that passage from Mr. Anstruther's letter. For a moment she almost imagined that she could hear her grandfather's caustic voice speaking to her, and though what he had said was not particularly flattering, she knew that it contained a certain amount of truth.

"Mrs. Murray wrote back and told him," Eleanor went on, "that I was making capital progress both with my singing and with the language, and that Madame Martelli was exceedingly pleased with me. She also said that I showed no disposition at all to mope, but was as busy and as brisk as a bee from morning to night. And so I am," said Eleanor with a laugh. "Madame Martelli sees to that. We have breakfast here every morning at eight, and by a quarter to nine I am down at Milan Cottage, which is the name of Madame's house, and I study and sing with her until half-past twelve, when I come home. We lunch at one, have tea at four, and directly after tea I go down to Milan Cottage again and am taken for a little walk by Madame. At half-past seven Mrs. Murray and I dine, and at half-past nine we go to bed. And that has been my daily life for the last three weeks."

But there was no need to ask Eleanor if she was satisfied with it. Every line of her face expressed radiant happiness, and though she spoke jestingly of the way in which her nose was kept to the grindstone, Margaret knew that she was really revelling in this chance of getting the instruction in Italian that she wanted. And as for the singing lessons, their value, she declared vehemently, was beyond price to her. Any time during the last two years she would, she said, have gladly lived in a hovel, fared on bread and water, and gone barefoot and in rags for the sake of them.

"Sometimes I wake up in the night and think I am only dreaming a beautiful dream," she said, "and that when I really am awake I shall find myself back in Hampstead in the ugly little dingy room that I shared with two little girls. And then I have to light my candle and look round me and assure myself that I really am in the pretty white bedroom that Mrs. Murray has given to me here, and that my good fortune is a reality and not a dream."

"Has your life been a very unhappy one?" Margaret asked her gravely one day.

"I have often been very unhappy," Eleanor answered thoughtfully; "but that, of course, is different to having had an unhappy life. Of course, my mother's and my father's death was a great grief to me, and when the sense of the awful loss their death was to me grew less the resentment I felt at my changed circumstances made me awfully bitter and unhappy for a time. For I can tell you it was a violent change. Up to the age of thirteen I lived as if I were going to be rich all my life and was the spoilt darling of my parents and of every one round me. After that I was a pupil teacher, taken in literally out of charity, in a second-rate suburban school. I am sure for a time I must have behaved too hatefully for words, and if Miss McDonald had sent me to the workhouse it would have served me right. But she knew that she was the only friend I had, and was awfully good to me. If I had only been older when the crash came I daresay I should have been better provided with friends; but at that age I wanted no friends except my own horses and dogs, and my father and mother were always too wrapped up in each other to care to make friends. So that was really why at their death I was left so utterly stranded, and had Miss McDonald not come forward to my rescue I would have gone, I suppose, to a charity school. She was, as I say, awfully good to me. You see, she understood, and that made all the difference. She had gone through much the same sudden change of fortune herself, for she had never been brought up to work for her living either. Somehow she did not say much, but she made me see the utter uselessness of repining and taught me how much braver it was to accept things as they are and to make the best of them. And so I set my teeth and made the best of them, or rather tried to make the best of them, which isn't quite the same thing, but still the best I could do. And I was getting sort of resigned to my lot when the idea came to me that I had a voice, and I went to see Signor Vanucci. An unknown girl and a famous man like that! The utter cheek of it, Margaret! But I have told you all about it and the hopes he raised, which were only to be dashed to the ground by his unexpected death. It took me months and months to get over it; in fact, in the sense of the word I never did get over it; even the gradual down-fall of the school and the awful struggle that Miss McDonald was going through never seemed to me as real as my own disappointment. I sometimes think, Margaret, that I must be horribly selfish and heartless. And then through you, Margaret, this second chance came, and though I held back at first, I seized it gladly and mean to hold it as long as I can, although I know," she added, "how very atrociously I am behaving to you and Mrs. Murray."

"Oh!" said Margaret in surprise, for this was the very first time Eleanor had admitted as much.

"Of course, I always knew I was doing wrong," Eleanor said, "but I tried to hush my conscience up. I can't hush it up any longer, but," she added with much vigour, "it needn't think that I am going to pay any attention to what it says, for I am not."

Margaret could scarcely help smiling at the defiant note in Eleanor's voice. The latter turned suddenly and laid her hand on Margaret's knee.

"Don't judge me too hardly, Margaret," she said. "I know you think me selfish and callous, and utterly without any decent feelings at all to be deliberately keeping you out of your own name, and to be taking everything that ought by rights to belong to you. But you don't know what this chance means to me. You can't even dimly conceive it. It is just the turning-point of my life.

"'There is a tide in the affairs of men, Which taken at the flood leads on to fortune, Omitted, all the voyage of their life Is bound in shallows and miseries. On such a full sea are we now afloat, And we must take the current when it serves, Or lose our ventures.'

"There, Margaret, doesn't that fit our case exactly? Shallows and miseries are Hampstead and the school, and the full sea is the chance you are giving me."

"You see, Margaret," she went on earnestly, "a voice is not quite like any other gift. If you don't train it when you are young you might as well not train it at all. It is too late when you are old, and then your gift is thrown away—wasted. Even as it is Madame Martelli says that I have no time to lose. She wants me to go to Milan next spring."

"To Milan!" Margaret exclaimed.

"Or to Paris," Eleanor went on half absently.

"To Paris!" Margaret echoed again.

"Don't remind me that I can't go!" Eleanor exclaimed fiercely, springing to her feet and beginning to pace up and down the path in front of the arbour, "for, of course, I know it without being told. I won't look forward, I won't, I won't! I will go on living in the present which is giving me all I want. The future is too gloomy and uncertain to be thought of yet, and so, hey presto!" and her brow cleared as if by magic, "I refuse to think of it."