The end of one of Eleanor's rapid speeches, in the course of which she could pass with astounding swiftness from one mood to another, always left Margaret with a slight feeling of bewilderment. In the present instance she had been greatly moved by Eleanor's impulsive appeal to her not to think badly of her, and had just been about to assure her that indeed she had never judged her conduct hardly when Eleanor had gone on to justify herself, to speak of her future plans, and had wound up as suddenly by refusing to consider the future at all.

No wonder, then, that Margaret, with whom speech was never very ready, felt at a loss what to answer when Eleanor, pausing in her restless march to and fro, asked her abruptly what she was thinking of.

"You listen, listen, listen always so silently, my little pale Margaret," she said, "and you look so grave and so wise, but never a word do you say."

"It is because you talk so fast and tell me so much that I have not time to answer one thing before you go on to another," said Margaret.

"Well, you never answered my question just now. Tell me, do you despise me for my selfishness?"

"No," said Margaret, with sudden earnestness, "I like you too much."

"Really and truly, Margaret?"

"Really and truly," Margaret made reply. "You know I liked you from the first moment I saw you in the waiting-room. You were the first girl of my own age that I had ever spoken to, and I shall never forget how I stood by the window watching you as you did your exercise, and wished you were my friend."

"And a pretty friend I have been to you," interrupted Eleanor. "I stole your name and everything that belongs to you, and, by the way, that reminds me——"

"It was my own wish," said Margaret, interrupting in her turn. "Never forget that, Eleanor. It was to please myself that I began it."

"But to please me that you went on with it," said Eleanor. "'Although he promise to his cost he makes his promise good,'" she quoted.

"Yes, perhaps," Margaret admitted; "but now, Eleanor, I am glad to do it for you, I am indeed. It gives me great pleasure to have a friend, and to be able to serve her."

An odd, shamed look came for a moment into Eleanor's eyes. "I wish you had found a better friend for your first one than me," she said; "or rather," she added ruefully, "I wish that I did wish it, but I don't. So it's no good pretending. You shall hear me sing one day, Margaret, and then you will know why it is that my conscience never gets a fair chance with me. If it talks too loud I just sing it down. But look here, Margaret, to talk of something else besides my voice for a minute, to which fascinating subject we always seem to go back, when I said just now that I had stolen your name and everything that belonged to you it reminded me that I had also come in for something for which I never bargained, and that was for an aunt. Did you know that you had an aunt living not four miles from here."

Margaret, much startled, answered that she did not know that she possessed an aunt at all.

"You do indeed, then," Eleanor said. "Wrexley Park is the name of her house; she was your father's sister, and she is now Lady Strangways."

Margaret's grave hazel eyes were opened to their fullest width.

"Are you sure that you are not making a mistake, Eleanor," she said, "or that you are not joking? I never heard before that I had an aunt or any relations at all except a grandfather."

"No, I am not making a mistake, nor am I joking," returned Eleanor. "Truth to say, it is no joking matter, for Lady Strangways has expressed a wish to see her niece, and is coming here this very afternoon for that purpose. Can you not tell me something about her?"

"How can I tell you anything when I never heard that she was my aunt until this very minute?"

"She was your father's youngest sister, however," continued Eleanor; "but she married very young, and has been out of England for years and years. Her husband was in the Indian Civil, and they were out in India most of their time, and when he was on leave he preferred to travel in other countries instead of coming home, or when he did come he paid such flying visits, that it gave Lady Strangways no time to look up unknown nieces, at any rate. But Sir Richard retired a couple of years ago, and bought Wrexley Park."

"Yes, but surely if she was really my aunt, my grandfather would have told me about her," said Margaret, "and wished me to know her."

"Not he," said Eleanor. "Mrs. Murray was talking about your grandfather last night. Oh, of course she did not say anything that was not fitting for a dutiful granddaughter to hear, but she did give me to understand that your grandfather was a very prejudiced man, and that he had purposely kept you away from all your father's relations. On your mother's side I understand you have none. And for the matter of that all your father's relations except this sister are dead. His two brothers died unmarried, and his elder sister, who is dead too, left no children. And there is only this Lady Strangways left. And she has been out of England so long, that she knew nothing of your grandfather's desire to keep you apart from your father's family."

"But how did she learn that you, that I, well, that her niece was staying with Mrs. Murray?"

"Through Mrs. Murray herself, of course, goosey gander. Mrs. Murray always knew she was your aunt, and welcomes this chance of bringing you together. For my part I wish she didn't. I have caught a glimpse of Lady Strangways in church, and she is rather an awe-inspiring person, and I do not at all relish the idea of being brought face to face with her some day, and keeping up our little deception."

"Miss Margaret! Miss Margaret!" called a voice at that moment. "Where are you, if you please, Miss?"

Eleanor started to her feet, and putting her finger to her lips as a sign to Margaret to keep silence, ran hastily out of the arbour, and along the path to the foot of the steps.

"Here I am, Mary," she said. "What is it?"

"If you please, Miss," said the voice, as the person to whom it belonged halted on the lawn at the top of the steps, "Lady Strangways has called, and the mistress says she will be down in a minute, and will you go into the drawing-room at once?"

"Very well, Mary, I will come in a moment."

The maid retraced her steps across the lawn, and Eleanor hastened back to the arbour.

"Do you hear that?" she whispered, with a whimsical smile. "Lady Strangways has come. Oh, how I wish I could send you in to see her instead of me! However, I am afraid that that is not possible, though I think it isn't fair that I should have to face this formidable aunt instead of you. I have an idea, too, that she won't like me. She looks too great and stately a lady, if you understand, to take a fancy to a flippant person like me, and she would have liked you. But, there, it's no good grumbling at my ill-luck; I must go and face her, I suppose, and make the best of an awkward situation."

"I should have thought that you would have enjoyed it," Margaret said, rather wondering at Eleanor's mood.

"I dislike taking any risks that put my singing lessons in jeopardy," said Eleanor vehemently; "besides, candidly, I feel that I shall not show to advantage in the forthcoming interview. It is not often that I feel shy, but I do feel shy of this aunt of yours. Well, good-bye! Sit quietly here; you will be quite safe, and I will come back as soon as I can and tell you all about your aunt."

With a hasty nod of farewell, Eleanor sped along the path and mounted the steps leading to the lawn. And hardly had she reached it than Margaret was startled to hear her being addressed, and the first words she overheard told Margaret that Lady Strangways, instead of waiting for her niece to come to her in the drawing-room, had followed the maid out to the garden. Had Eleanor delayed only a moment or two longer, Lady Strangways would probably have come upon them both in the arbour.

"You were so long in coming to me, my dear Margaret," said the unseen voice, in clear, well-bred tones that struck pleasantly on the real Margaret's ear, "that I decided to come into the garden and look for you. Let me introduce myself. I am your Aunt Helen, your father's sister. I am sorry to have been a stranger to you until now, but that is not my fault. I have only just returned to England after an absence of many years, and strange though it may appear to you, I really did not know of your existence until the other day. My brother was many years older than I, and I never saw him after I was a child. In fact I was to all intents and purposes a stranger to all my brothers and sisters. They were all grown up while I was in the schoolroom still, and were very little at home. But I knew that my brother John had married a distant cousin of the same surname as our own, whose Christian name was Margaret, and that was all I ever heard of him; and when I heard that a girl, called Margaret Anstruther, was staying here, I felt sure that you must be my niece. And, you see, I was right. I am very pleased to see you, my dear, and to have an opportunity of coming to know you at last."

The pleasant, clear voice, the graciously uttered words, held Margaret—the real Margaret, that is—spellbound; then, jumping to her feet, she climbed on to the rockery that supported the bank above her and peeped through the tall-growing herbaceous plants that grew thickly on the border at the edge of the lawn. It never occurred to her that she was eaves-dropping, and even if it had, she would not have felt greatly ashamed. After all, this was her aunt, and she believed she was speaking to her niece. Surely, therefore, her niece had every right to listen to what she was saying.

Lady Strangways stood on the grass just at the top of the flight of steps, up which Eleanor had had barely time to scramble before she got there, and Margaret, parting the leaves and stems of the intervening plants, was able to take a good long look at her unknown aunt.

Lady Strangways was tall, and carried her head and shoulders in a stately way that gave her grace and distinction. She had a broad, low brow, and a mouth and chin which showed decision of character as well as sweetness of disposition. But it was her eyes that were her chief charm. They were beautiful hazel eyes, and as Margaret looked at them a feeling came over her that they were oddly familiar to her, and yet she had never seen Lady Strangways before. Altogether, it was a face that attracted attention, and charmed by its sunny-tempered grace and kindness.

Margaret continued to gaze at this aunt in a fascinated way, and a curious little feeling of pride thrilled in her as she reflected that she was the niece of any one who not only looked so sweet and so gracious as Lady Strangways, but who was so evidently a woman of fashion and of the great world.

Margaret remembered the flutter of excitement which Mrs. Danvers had shown when, on returning from a tea-party one day, she had found Lady Strangways' card on the table, and the regret she had expressed that she had been out. What, then, would the Danvers say, Margaret wondered, when they heard that she was a niece of Lady Strangways?

For a moment Margaret quite enjoyed the thought of their prospective astonishment, until with a little pang she remembered that it was Eleanor who was being acknowledged at this moment by this charming-looking aunt, not she, and a slow, painful jealousy stirred in Margaret at the thought.

Not that Eleanor was usurping the relationship at all willingly. Margaret could see that her unfortunate accomplice, who was generally so ready of tongue, and so self-confident, was very far from feeling at her ease in the presence of Lady Strangways, and was comporting herself like an awkward, embarrassed schoolgirl. For a time she seemed absolutely incapable of answering anything that was said to her, except in monosyllables, and though Lady Strangways did her best to set her at her ease, her efforts met with poor success.

"My dear child," she said at last, as she drew Eleanor's reluctant hand within her arm, and tried to look into the girl's averted face, "you must not be so shy with me! Remember that I am your aunt, and that as you have no mother, and I no daughter, we might be very much to one another in the future."

These graciously uttered words, accompanied as they were by a charming smile, and a gentle drawing of the girl to her side, as if she would have kissed her, caused Margaret's jealousy to increase.

But the proffered caress, far from waking in Eleanor a responsive feeling, caused her to shrink further away from Lady Strangways' side.

"You are very kind, Lady Strangways," she said uneasily, "but—but we are only strangers as yet, aren't we?"

Had Eleanor not been at her wits' end to know what to say, she would scarcely have uttered such an extremely gauche remark as that, but as a matter of fact she had not the very remotest idea what she was saying.

Lady Strangways drew back and looked gravely for a moment at Eleanor's averted face. She was obviously unused to have her overtures rejected, and she was wondering if Eleanor's ungracious answer and constrained manner was dictated by shyness only.

"Yes, at present we are strangers," she made reply, rather coldly; "but I wish to know my niece, and you mustn't call me Lady Strangways, you must call me Aunt Helen."

"Oh, I would really rather not," Eleanor said, and this time her distress and embarrassment were so marked that Lady Strangways, though she still looked exceedingly puzzled, allowed her manner to soften.

"Never mind, then," she said, "I won't ask you to do anything you would rather not. I hear you are having singing lessons from Madame Martelli. Will you sing to me?"

"Oh, yes," Eleanor responded with alacrity. She started across the lawn towards the house at a great rate, her relief at being released from the immediate necessity of further conversation with her new-found relative so plainly expressed in the way in which she was careful to keep a couple of yards ahead of her, that Lady Strangways raised her eyebrows in mute protest at her niece's extraordinarily farouche behaviour.

When they reached the little drawing-room, gay with flowers, she sank gracefully into a chair, and resigned herself to a rather trying five minutes. Eleanor searched among her music, opened the piano, and sat down.

"What are you going to sing to me, dear," Lady Strangways asked in a tone of polite interest.

"Ah fors e lui."

Lady Strangways did her very best to repress a shudder. Not a month had elapsed since she had seen Tetrazzini in "La Traviata," and it was rather terrible to think of hearing her poor niece attempt any song out of that opera.

"Or, if you would prefer it," said Eleanor, with a demureness that was contradicted by the mischievous gleam in her red-brown eyes, "I will sing you the Jewel Song out of 'Faust.'"

"That would be worse," Lady Strangways said hastily; "I mean, my dear, that would be more difficult perhaps for you to grapple with. Really, I have no choice in the matter; sing me what you like."

Eleanor twisted round on her stool and surveyed her aunt, or rather, the lady who thought she was her aunt, with an amused smile. All of a sudden a complete change had come over her demeanour. The neighbourhood of a piano always seemed to give Eleanor confidence, and now her shyness and awkwardness fell away from her, and she twisted round on the music stool and surveyed her quondam aunt with an amused smile. It pleased her to delay her inevitable triumph for a moment or two, even to pose as a vain, silly schoolgirl.

"I really sing very well," she said; "though I can see that you do not believe it."

"Let me hear you," said Lady Strangways encouragingly, "and then I can tell you what I think. Do not be too shy to sing your best."

"I am never shy when I am singing," said Eleanor. "Why should I be? I am proud of my beautiful voice. No young, coming-on singer has a voice like it; in a few years, with proper training and hard work, I shall rank with Melba and Tetrazzini."

Lady Strangways gave a little gasp.

"You have not a very modest opinion of yourself, my dear," she could not refrain from saying, as she eyed her niece rather curiously.

"Of myself I have a very modest opinion," returned Eleanor. "I know my own faults, and some of them are pretty bad, as you will say one day, perhaps, but there is no fault to be found with my voice—none—except that, of course, it is not trained yet; but it would be too absurd for me to be mock modest about it as though its beauty were something that I could plume myself on. It is a gift—a glorious gift—and I love it and worship it."

Eleanor made a striking picture as she sat there with her hands folded in her lap, while the sun, pouring in from a small west window set high in the wall, turned her red-brown hair to gold. Lady Strangways surveyed her with an ever deepening amazement. This niece, with her brilliant colouring and her excited, vivacious manner, was very unlike the girl she had imagined her niece would be; very different, also, to the shy, awkward girl she had been a few minutes back.

As Eleanor gave utterance to her impassioned speech, the slightly mocking smile with which she had been eyeing Lady Strangways died away, and was replaced by an earnest, rapt look, which showed to her listener how seriously she herself took every word she was saying.

Then Eleanor turned to the piano and ran her fingers lightly over the keys. Lady Strangways nodded approvingly, as she listened to the firm, good touch. The girl was really quite musical. She perceived that already, and if her choice of a song had been less wildly ambitious, or better still, if she would go on playing and not sing at all, why——



But at that moment Eleanor began to sing, and the look of kindly approval which Lady Strangways' face had worn was swept away as by some magic touch, for Signor Vanucci and Madame Martelli had made no mistake. Eleanor had a great, a glorious voice; clear and sweet as a golden bell; full, and deep, and rich; it was a voice which would one day add the name of its owner to the list of the world's great singers.

Lady Strangways recognised the fact instantly. Though she neither played nor sang, she was a capable judge of music, and she knew that this girl's voice would carry her to the front rank. Of course, her rendering of the song was far from perfect, her phrasing was often inaccurate, her voice not under control, and its training unfinished; but what mattered those details? Lady Strangways knew she was listening to a magnificent voice, and sheer delight and amazement held her spellbound for some moments after the last full, throbbing notes had died away into silence. Then she rose impulsively and crossed to the piano.

"My dear," she said simply, "God has given you a great gift."

Eleanor nodded in a grave, almost abstracted manner.

"Yes," she said, in low, dreamy tones, "He has." Then suddenly her tranquil mood changed, and she appeared to be swept by a sudden gust of passion. "And sometimes," she added bitterly, "I wonder why, if it is only by resorting to trickery and roguery that I can make use of it."

"My dear child, what do you mean?" Lady Strangways said in astonishment, not unmixed with displeasure. "Those are strange words for a niece of mine to apply to her own conduct."

"Are they?" said Eleanor; "but tell me, wouldn't you stoop to any trickery—any meanness, if you had a voice like mine, and saw no chance of getting it trained?"

Her face had grown very pale, but her eyes blazed into Lady Strangways as she stood confronting her. The latter, seeing that the girl was literally shaking with emotion, and not having the clue to her thoughts, supposed that she was merely overwrought by her singing.

"But why should it be necessary to resort to meanness of any sort to have your voice trained?" she said, speaking purposely in a calm, matter-of-fact voice. "Your grandfather appears perfectly willing to have you taught, otherwise he would scarcely have put you under such a teacher as Madame Martelli."

"You don't understand," Eleanor muttered, turning away her head, unable to meet Lady Strangways' serene, beautiful eyes. Somehow they made her feel terribly ashamed of the part she was playing.

"No; but I am trying to," said Lady Strangways in a perplexed tone, "and I cannot imagine why you should be under any apprehension that your grandfather will try and put obstacles in the way of your getting all the training your beautiful voice deserves. Is he not proud of it?"

Eleanor shook her head. "He doesn't know anything about it," she said; "he just thinks his niece has a nice little drawing-room voice."

Lady Strangways drew a deep breath. "Oh, I understand now," she said. "You are afraid that he will not let you train for the stage, that he will be prejudiced against it. But, my dear Margaret, that would be an unheard-of pity; such a voice as yours must not be wasted—it would be a sin. I shall use my influence with your grandfather, if he is really against your being properly trained, and get him to consent to your having the very best teaching that can be given to you. And if it is a question of money——"

But there Lady Strangways paused and looked a little doubtful. Truth to say, she did not think that money had anything to do with the question; she remembered vaguely to have heard that her brother had married an heiress; if so, his only daughter would surely not lack means to train for any career she fancied.

"No, no!" Eleanor exclaimed almost violently, "I could not take money from you—I could not. It will be far better if we never see each other again." And brushing suddenly past the astounded Lady Strangways, Eleanor dashed out of the window and disappeared in a flash round the corner of the house.

"Well, of all the most astonishing girls I ever met, my niece, Margaret Anstruther, is certainly the most astonishing," was Lady Strangways' inward comment as she gazed after Eleanor's flying figure. "She seems to pass through a greater variety of moods in a shorter space of time than any one I ever met. She must be a very uncomfortable person to live with. But what a magnificent voice! What a tremendous gift she has been endowed with!"

But at that point Lady Strangways' musings were interrupted by the belated appearance of her hostess, who came limping with the aid of a stick, and with a slow and painful step into the room.

For, as she had said in her letter to Mr. Anstruther, Mrs. Murray was a martyr to an acute form of rheumatism, and though few people beyond her old and attached servants knew it, she was seldom long out of pain. And, partly on account of her rheumatism, and partly because she was so very deaf, she shunned society, and was rarely to be met with in any one else's house, although she gladly welcomed any one who, as she put it, was kind enough to come and see her. But, on the other hand, she visited a great deal among the poor, not only in her own village, but in the villages for many miles around Windy Gap, and the sight of her fat, sturdy, grey ponies drawing up outside the doors of their cottages was one that never failed to give pleasure to their inmates. She and Lady Strangways had met over a year ago at the bedside of a poor girl who was suffering from an incurable malady, and whose parents rented a cottage on the Wrexley estate. Lady Strangways, who was conscientiously trying, in the intervals of a very full and busy life, to know all her husband's tenants, and who, wherever she went, heard Mrs. Murray's praises sounded, asked at once to be allowed to call on her. Mrs. Murray answered courteously that it would give her great pleasure to know Lady Strangways, but pleaded her infirmities as an excuse for paying any visits herself. In spite of her deafness and her lameness, Mrs. Murray was the soul of cheerfulness. Though she was cut off from much intercourse with her fellow-creatures, she was never at a loss for occupation, and had so many resources within herself that she rarely had a dull moment. For one thing she was an omnivorous reader, and just as Mrs. Danvers never sat down without a piece of knitting in her hand, so Mrs. Murray never sat down without a book.

"Needlework," she had said once when a friend had tried to induce her to ply a needle of some sort, "is all very well for those who can hear. They can work and listen at the same time, but if I took to knitting, or crochet, or embroidery, I should be shut up with my own thoughts instead of getting out of myself and away into some of the best company in the world. My thinking," she added with a wry little smile, "is done at night, when my rheumatism will not permit me to sleep."

"So you have seen Margaret," she said, in the curious low voice habitual to her, which made it almost as difficult for other people to hear what she said as she found it to hear what they said. "I left you with her so long on purpose that you might make her acquaintance. Is she not a charming girl?"

Now as "charming" was certainly not the word which her short experience of Eleanor's behaviour that afternoon would have led her to apply to her niece, Lady Strangways hesitated.

"Ah!" said Mrs. Murray, quick to notice and to interpret aright her hesitation. "But you have only seen her for the first time to-day. Now I have known her for some weeks, and I have grown to love her. You do not wish," and a pathetically anxious look came into her face, "to take her away from me, do you?"

Lady Strangways' shake of her head reassured Mrs. Murray on that point.

"I hope her grandfather will leave her with me for many months to come yet," she continued. "She is very happy with me; far happier than I think any young girl ought to be with only one old deaf woman for company. But she is so occupied with her studies and her music that I think I count little one way or another with her."

"Oh, no, I cannot believe that," Lady Strangways said in a tone of remonstrance. "You are so good to her that she must be very fond of you, and appreciate all your kindness to her."

"It is not much that I can do," said Mrs. Murray. "She is so absorbed in her work that she makes her own happiness. I wish," she added, a little wistfully, "that she did desire my company a little more, but then I must not be selfish. She did not come here to make a companion of me, but to pursue her own studies. And she certainly does pursue them with an ardour that, from what her grandfather told me of her dreamy, indolent ways, I had not expected from her."

"But surely she does not want to study all day long," said Lady Strangways, with more than a hint of disapprobation in her voice. She read more into Mrs. Murray's wistful remark than the latter had intended to convey, and she began to fear that her new-found niece, in addition to being odd mannered and hasty tempered, was a thoroughly selfish young person into the bargain.

Mrs. Murray seemed to guess her thoughts.

"Now," she exclaimed in genuine distress, "I have given you a wrong impression of the dear girl. I like her to be enthusiastic about her work. It is only right that she should be. And, as I say, she did not come here to amuse and entertain a deaf old woman like myself. But all the same, I am the better for having her. Her vivacious personality cheers and brightens the house without any effort on her part. And does she not sing nicely?"

"Nicely!" echoed Lady Strangways in sheer amazement, every other thought of her niece being instantly put on one side directly her marvellous voice came under discussion. "Nicely! Is it possible that you do not know that she has a wonderful voice?"

"Yes, very nice and strong, isn't it," said Mrs. Murray, who had really only caught enough of her visitor's last remark to know that she was praising her young guest. "But I have only heard her once or twice as yet. Madame Martelli will not allow her to sing much to me, or to any one, at present. She likes to hear every note she utters. I think her grandfather will be pleased with her progress when she goes home. He told me she had a nice voice, well worth some good finishing lessons, and Madame Martelli seems to be taking great pains with her."

Lady Strangways smiled as she thought of the immense difference that lay between Mr. Anstruther's conception of the quality of his granddaughter's voice, and that voice as it actually was. But she had no time to stay and enlighten Mrs. Murray as to the truth. She was due at a house some miles away for tea, and could not stay at Rose Cottage any longer.

If the afternoon had been an exciting one for Eleanor, it had been scarcely less so for Margaret. Lady Strangways' gracious personality had made a deep and instant impression on her, and to have been obliged to look on while such a charming person as her aunt, who had come specially to make her acquaintance, was being coldly and rudely rebuffed by Eleanor acting in her place, had been really a trying ordeal for her. Her own aunt! How strange and wonderful it seemed that she, who had not known that she possessed any relatives in the world but her grandfather, had really owned an aunt all the time. An aunt, too, who was fully as anxious to know and love her as Margaret was to respond to that affection. There was in Margaret a fine large store of affection ready to be lavished upon somebody. Hitherto that affection had not been wanted by any one; but now she had her aunt's words for it that she was prepared to look upon her as a daughter. And Eleanor had answered coldly and ungraciously, while she, Margaret, would have made, oh! such a different answer if circumstances of her own contriving—therein lay the sting—had not prevented from answering on her own account at all. And, instead of talking to that nice new aunt of hers, she had been compelled to hide behind a big clump of perennial sunflowers—all her life Margaret felt she would hate those flowers—and listen to Eleanor offending and estranging her aunt with every word she uttered.

And then Eleanor had taken her aunt away to sing to her. And the exceeding beauty of Eleanor's voice as it floated out across the lawn had sent another pang through Margaret's jealous heart. Oh, she knew how it would be, she told herself miserably, as, seeking refuge in the shady little arbour where she and Eleanor held their stolen meetings, she sat down on the bench, and, resting her elbows on the little rustic table, gave herself up to her moody reflections. Eleanor would win Lady Strangways' heart so completely that, even when the truth about them came out, her aunt would have no affection left for her.

Margaret was so occupied with these dismal thoughts that she did not hear Eleanor's step on the gravel, and was considerably startled when a touch on her shoulder made her look up to see the other standing beside her. She had expected to see Eleanor wearing a triumphant, elated air, and was consequently very much surprised to find that, to judge from the expression on her face at least, Eleanor's mood was not more happy than her own.

"Has my aunt gone?" she said.

Eleanor gave a short, mocking little laugh.

"I am afraid, for the time being at any rate," she said, "I must claim half of her. So I may tell you that our aunt is still in the drawing-room. But really I couldn't stand her any longer. So I fled and left her there."

"But—but, I thought she was being so nice to you," faltered Margaret, at a loss for a moment to know what Eleanor meant, "and that you had taken a great fancy to one another."

"Oh, she was all right," said Eleanor. "I should think she was what Americans would call just a lovely person. But somehow she made me feel such a sham and a fraud that I never want to see her again, and so I would have none of her kindness. Knowing that it was not meant for me, and that I was getting it under false pretences, I was—well—so rude that I don't expect she will ever want to see me again."

"Oh!" said Margaret, and she could not help feeling just a little bit pleased to hear that Eleanor had not found favour in Lady Strangways' eyes. Certainly she did not deserve to after the way in which she had repelled all her overtures. Then, of a sudden, a disquieting thought came to her. "But oh, Eleanor," she said aghast, "can't you see that she will think that it is I, her real niece, who has been so rude to her? Oh, Eleanor, that is just as bad as, as——"

"As if she had fallen in love with me," said Eleanor, bursting out laughing. "Oh, Margaret, how transparent you are! I wonder you have been able to deceive all the Danvers family so long. But I must confess that I never thought how very unfavourably I was impressing your aunt with you. Well, well, it can't be helped now. You will put matters straight some day."

"She reminded me so much of some one," said Margaret, pursuing her own train of thought; "but I cannot think of whom. And that is curious because I have seen so few people in my life, that I ought to remember whom it is that she resembles without any difficulty. It was her eyes that puzzled me most. Such beautiful eyes they are. And I am sure I know some one else who has eyes like them."

Eleanor glanced at Margaret and then began to laugh.

"Of course you do," she said, "and so do I. You see that person every time you look in the glass. It is you yourself who have Lady Strangways' eyes, my dear Margaret."



CHAPTER XIII

HILARY TURNS DETECTIVE

"Eleanor," said Hilary, coming into the hall one afternoon with a couple of books in her hand, "if you are going out I want you to go to Smith's, please, and change these two library books for me."

It had been raining all day, and though the rain had now changed to a slight drizzle a thick mist creeping on from the sea had already blotted out the downs, and was hanging like a low cloud over the town. It was as cheerless an afternoon as could well be imagined, and Margaret who, suffering from a bad cold in her head, had not been out for a couple of days, hesitated a moment before replying. But the request was couched in such a peremptory tone that she did not quite like to refuse it. After all, since the children had gone away she was doing absolutely nothing in return for her board and lodging, and, since Hilary had forgotten that she was nursing a cold, it would have seemed ungracious to remind her of the fact.

But Hilary had not forgotten Margaret's cold. Had it been ten times as bad, however, she would still have despatched her on this errand. For the long-awaited, carefully planned-for moment when she could bring home Margaret's guilt to her had, in Hilary's confident estimation, at length arrived. A few minutes since, rummaging in the dressing-room next Margaret's room in search of some gloves that needed cleaning, she had chanced to espy under the bed the trunk in which the boys had hidden the Colonel's property. They had supposed it to belong to their mother, but Hilary knew that it was Eleanor's.

Rendered thoroughly uneasy by the continued stir that Colonel Baker was making about his loss, Jack and Noel had determined to smuggle his things out of their house and to deposit them somewhere in his garden, where he could easily find them, and to that end they had been trying, but without success so far, to open the trunk with various keys belonging to their mother. And it was the sight of these keys scattered about beside the trunk that had fired Hilary's detective ardour. What was Eleanor doing with her mother's keys? It could be for no good purpose that she had secreted them under the bed.

Without more ado, Hilary made up her mind to search that trunk. And the first thing to be done was to secure herself against interruption. So she invented an errand to take Eleanor out of the house for an hour or two. The others were all down at the rink, and having seen Margaret start, Hilary sped up to the box-room, secured a few keys, and set to work.

Two or three keys were tried in vain, but the fourth turned easily in the lock, and with hands that fairly trembled with excitement, she threw back the lid. The tray was empty. She lifted it out, and as she did so gave vent to a little cry of triumph. For there, at the bottom, reposed a bundle tied up in a gold embroidered scarlet Indian tablecloth which any one in Seabourne who had read any recent numbers of the local papers would have recognised immediately as Colonel Baker's missing property.

Literally pouncing upon it, Hilary dragged it out of the trunk and untied the four knotted corners, when out fell the tumbled contents of the Colonel's plate-basket—the big morocco case which contained his family miniatures, his Etruscan bronze vase, and his collection of gold coins.

All things considered, Hilary took her astonishing discovery very calmly. After all, it was only what she had been expecting. Her chief sensation at that moment was one of surprise that the trunk did not also contain the proceeds of the two other robberies. Probably, however, they would be found in Miss Carson's bedroom. Had she not been so obsessed by the idea that Miss Carson was the burglar with whose exploits the town had been ringing of late, Hilary might have hesitated before taking the step of searching the room of a girl who was, to all intents and purposes, a guest in their house. But the idea that she was doing anything disgraceful never occurred to her. The zeal of the amateur detective was far too strong upon her to leave room for reflections of that sort. She opened the door of Margaret's bedroom and went in. The room was exquisitely neat, for not only had habits of tidiness been inculcated in Margaret since she was old enough to fold a garment, but the spacious bedroom allotted to her at The Cedars, with its big mahogany hanging wardrobes and its deep chest of drawers, contained so much more room than she needed that there would have been no excuse for any one to have been untidy.

At first it seemed to Hilary that her search here was going to be unrewarded; the cupboards and drawers in which Margaret kept her dresses were soon searched through and revealed nothing at all of a suspicious nature. The two top drawers then underwent an examination, and the orderly little piles of veils and handkerchiefs were ruthlessly tumbled about by Hilary's eager hands. But all in vain. There was no vestige of a proof here that Miss Carson had had a hand in the two first burglaries as well as in the last. Feeling baffled and quite unreasonably indignant, Hilary turned her attention next to the dressing-table. The toilet articles on it were few and simple, and Hilary was about to turn away, when her eyes were caught by Margaret's gold watch and chain, which were hanging on a small velvet stand. The watch was an old-fashioned one, with an open gold face, and the long slender chain was also of gold. Attached to it were a watch-key and a very small steel key.

Hilary remembered that Miss Carson invariably wore the watch and chain, so that this small key evidently fitted something that she was careful always to keep locked up. As Hilary picked up this key the chain slid away from it, and she saw that the spring of the swivel was broken. That accounted, then, for the fact that Miss Carson was not wearing her watch, as she usually did. And when she left it on the dressing-table she had evidently forgotten that she was leaving the little key, which as a rule she was so careful to wear, lying about too.

Criminals, Hilary reflected with immense satisfaction as she picked up the key, always did forget important things of that sort. Now what did that little key fit? Evidently some bag or some small box which contained something that it behoved her to keep carefully concealed from every eye but her own. Now, where could that bag or box be, Hilary wondered, as she glanced round the room. Were there any drawers or cupboards that she had not yet thoroughly searched? Yes, there was the big bottom drawer in the wardrobe, in which Miss Carson kept her hats. She had looked into it once, but seeing that it apparently contained nothing but the few simple hats that the holiday governess owned, had pushed it to again. But now, feeling that that cursory glance had not been sufficient, Hilary knelt down before the wardrobe, and putting her hand to the back of the drawer, pulled out Margaret's morocco dressing-bag. It was the work of a moment only to fit the key in the lock, and then its contents were at the mercy of her prying eyes. But beyond the leather-covered case that Margaret had shown to Eleanor in the train the bag was empty, and Hilary, who had expected to find it crammed full of jewellery, experienced a sharp pang of disappointment. But when she opened the case and saw the pearl-studded locket and the beautiful row of pearls that formed its chain, her face brightened. The initials "M. A." on the back of the locket, to say nothing of the fine, copper-plate inscription, "For my daughter Margaret," that ran round the narrow gold setting of the miniature, were, of course, conclusive proof that it did not belong to Miss Carson. Hilary remembered, too, the handkerchief embroidered with those same incriminating initials which Miss Carson had one day dropped in the garden. Though it seemed to Hilary an unimportant matter now, she yet looked upon it as a link in the long chain of circumstantial evidence which she alone and unaided had forged against Miss Carson. Really, she thought, she had a right to be proud of herself, for had she not shown more intelligence and acumen in the detection of the Seabourne burglaries than every police official in the town. How every one would admire her skill! Her portraits might possibly appear in the illustrated papers, and as for the local papers, they would, of course, print long accounts of the marvellous way in which, working quite alone, she had succeeded in unravelling the mystery that had baffled the whole of the Seabourne police.

And as Hilary sat there pluming herself on her cleverness and lost in the pleasant dreams of the fame that would be shortly hers, the door opened, and Margaret, who had only just come back and was still in her outdoor things, walked into her bedroom.

It was not until she had advanced some way into the room that she saw Hilary, and then Margaret came to a sudden halt in sheer amazement at the scene that greeted her. Her astonished gaze travelled from Hilary round her room, with its disordered aspect, its open cupboards and ransacked drawers, and then she looked again at Hilary, who, with the open morocco case in her hand, met her eyes defiantly.

"Will you tell me, please, what you mean by this conduct, Hilary?" she said, feeling almost too amazed to be angry.

"Oh yes, I will tell you fast enough," Hilary said, who had been as taken aback by Margaret's sudden entry as the latter had been to find her there, and who, considerably to her own surprise and annoyance, was conscious of a distinct feeling of shame at the position in which she had been caught. But as she scrambled to her feet and faced Margaret she shook off that feeling. After all, it was for the latter to feel ashamed, not for her.

"You are found out," she said slowly and emphatically. "I have found you out."

"So," Margaret thought then, "it had come at last. Hilary, poking among her possessions, had somehow discovered her real name. Oh, poor Eleanor! What would happen to her now?"

"You ask me what I mean by coming into your room; but that's nothing. It is for you to explain how you dared to come into our house, a thief and a burglar like you. But I," throwing out her arm dramatically, "have unmasked you."

If Hilary had not been too excited by the vigour of her own denunciation to notice Margaret's expression, she might have been bewildered by the look of very decided relief which succeeded to the one of startled dismay with which Margaret had listened to the beginning of her speech. What Hilary had discovered, or fancied she had discovered, really did not matter as long as her secret and Eleanor's was safe.

"Please give me that case at once," she said; "I am afraid, if you wave it about like that, you will drop it, and I value it very much. You had no right to come into my room and meddle with my things, and poke and pry in all my drawers."

"Meddle, and poke, and pry! How dare you use such words to me?" cried Hilary, all the more furiously because the objectionable words contained a sting of truth. "And your things, indeed! I suppose you will say next that this is your necklace and your miniature?"

"Certainly I will," said Margaret with spirit, and without seeing at first whither this admission would lead her. "That is a miniature of my mother; and if you will read the inscription you will see that she gave it to me."

"A fine story," said Hilary contemptuously; "only your name doesn't happen to be Margaret, nor does your surname begin with an 'A.' Ah! you forget that, I think, when you said that your mother gave it to you."

Truly, Margaret had forgotten that, and she met Hilary's triumphant gaze with an expression akin to dismay. She had got herself suddenly into an awkward corner. If she persisted in saying that the miniature and pearls were hers, Hilary would find out that she was passing under an assumed name; whereas, on the other hand, if she did not assert her ownership of them, she would lay herself open to the charge that she had stolen them. It was a perplexing situation, and she hardly knew whether to be relieved or not, when she found, as she speedily did, that Hilary had quite made up her mind that she was a thief.

"You are discovered, I tell you," said Hilary. "I know you belong to the gang of burglars that have been robbing people's houses here during the last six weeks. Come into the dressing-room, and you will see how useless it is to brazen matters out like this."

The fact that Margaret was totally unprepared to see her trunk, that she believed to be empty and pushed away beneath the bed, standing out in the middle of the room, half full of silver, had of course been anticipated by Hilary, who enjoyed her surprise to the full. But the anger that was mingled with Miss Carson's astonishment was, of course, a sham, and Hilary treated it with the contempt she was so convinced that it deserved.

"Did you put all those things in my trunk?" Margaret said indignantly. "What does it mean? Those are the things that were stolen from Colonel Baker's house. I recognise the description of the Indian tablecloth."

"Of course you do," said Hilary with a sneer, "seeing that you stole it to wrap the things in, thief and burglar that you are!"

"Do you really mean that you seriously believe I am a burglar?" Margaret said, and, to Hilary's intense disgust, who felt that this flippant conduct robbed her in some way of her triumph, she went off into a perfect peal of laughter.

"Oh, you are too funny! And do you think that I broke into Walker's shop, too, and also carried off the actress's jewels?"

"Oh, you may laugh if you like," said Hilary furiously. She would have liked to have seen Margaret tremble before her as a criminal should tremble, but she supposed she was too hardened. "But it is a joke that will land you in prison to-night. I am now going down to tell mother all about the sort of person we have in the house, and so that you shan't escape before the police come to take you, I am going to lock you in here."

And almost before the last words had left her lips Hilary whisked herself dexterously out of the room, and slammed the door after her. Margaret heard her locking the door of the bedroom as she passed it on her way downstairs. Margaret's mixture of feelings at this treatment was so curious that at first she could neither laugh nor be angry. She was too angry to laugh, and too amused to be angry. When, however, she walked into her bedroom and saw how thoroughly Hilary had turned over every one of her possessions, leaving them either in a rumpled state in the drawers, or scattered on the floor, indignation triumphed over amusement.

Hilary's charges, too, absurd though, of course, they were, had been brought against her in all seriousness, and Margaret's rising anger made her feel that she must be made to retract them immediately. She found, on going first to one door and then to the other, that though the door of her bedroom was locked, that of the dressing-room was not; for Hilary, finding after she had slammed the door that the key was on the inside, had been obliged to leave it unlocked rather than risk a struggle, for she had been doubtful whether Miss Carson would have permitted herself to be locked in had the swiftness of the action not taken her by surprise.

As Margaret went downstairs she heard Hilary's voice talking fast and eagerly in the drawing-room. She had had five or six minutes start to tell her tale in, and a good deal can be said in five or six minutes, provided that the listener does not hinder the narrator by interruptions. And Mrs. Danvers had not once interrupted, and Hilary had therefore been able to make such good use of her time that she had given her mother a full and complete account of the way in which her first suspicions that there was something mysterious about Miss Carson had gradually grown into a certainty, as clue after clue came into her hands, until this afternoon, by finding all Colonel Baker's stolen property locked away in a box under her bed, she had actually proved her to be a member of the notorious gang of burglars.

Mrs. Danvers' knitting had long ago dropped on to her lap, her ball of wool had rolled unheeded under a chair, and her eyes, round with incredulity and dismay, had been fixed unblinkingly upon her daughter.

"In a box under her bed! All Colonel Baker's things!" she gasped. "Oh, Hilary! and you mean to say that you actually found them there?"

"Yes, every one of them, not half an hour ago," returned Hilary complacently. "And what is more, hidden away in her drawer, I found this." And she opened the case and displayed the necklace and miniature to her mother. "She doesn't attempt to claim Colonel Baker's things as her own, but she persists in saying that this is hers. And considering the inscription, 'To my daughter Margaret,' that is written on it, it is rather silly of her. Without doubt," Hilary added, "it belongs to Miss Cora Anatolia, the Bulgarian dancer."

"But her name doesn't begin with an 'M,' either," said Mrs. Danvers.

"Oh, actresses have lots of names," Hilary said impatiently. "That's not a point we need consider. The point is that whoever it belongs to, it is not Miss Carson's."

And it was at that moment that Margaret, still wearing the hat and the rainproof coat that she had donned to go into the town, entered the drawing-room. She carried her head high, and walked straight down the long drawing-room to Mrs. Danvers' side.

"Your daughter Hilary has been telling you that I am a thief and a burglar, hasn't she?" she said, "and I have come to ask you if you believe her."

Mrs. Danvers shifted uneasily in her chair. There was nothing she disliked more than anything approaching a dispute, and really, when she looked up at the slim, pale girl standing before her it seemed quite too ridiculous to believe, as she had been inclined a moment before to do, that she was a member of a desperate gang of burglars. Hilary was quick to notice her mother's wavering manner, and intervened quickly.

"Then how do you account for all Colonel Baker's things being found locked up in your box?" she exclaimed quickly. "Tell me that."

"I have already told you that I know nothing at all about them. I unpacked my box when I came, and Collins put it away under my bed, and I have never opened it or looked at it since."

There was such an air of sincerity in her voice, that Mrs. Danvers veered round to her side once more.

"There, my dear," she said to Hilary, "you hear what Miss Carson said. She knows nothing whatever about Colonel Baker's things."

"Oh, of course, she would say anything to clear herself," said Hilary angrily. "Don't be so weak as to listen to her, mother. Let her explain how they were found in her box, then. And let her, while she is about it, too, explain how she claims this necklace as her own. Is it the sort of necklace that a holiday governess would own? It must be worth several hundreds of pounds at least. I found it locked up in her dressing bag, and hadn't she happened to leave the key which, as a rule, she is always careful to carry about with her, lying on her dressing table, I could not have got at it."

"Oh, Hilary!" said Mrs. Danvers feebly, "I don't think it was nice of you to poke and pry about in her room, I really don't."

"That is what I told her," said Margaret coldly and contemptuously. "She first of all invented an errand that took me out of the house, and then used the opportunity to search my room."

"Detectives have to do things of that sort," said Hilary, reddening in spite of herself; "but that's not the point. The point is that she says this necklace belongs to her, that the miniature inside the locket is one of her mother who gave it to her. Now, seeing that her name is Eleanor Carson, and not Margaret or a surname beginning with an 'A.,' it is plain enough to any one that she is telling a lie."

"Oh dear!" said Mrs. Danvers feebly, feeling quite unequal to cope with the gravity of the situation, "I wish you both would not quarrel like this, Hilary; you talk so fast that you bewilder me. Now, Miss Carson, it is your turn to speak. I am quite sure that you can explain everything if you will. You are too young, and—and far too nice a girl to be a burglar, and if you will only tell us how Colonel Baker's things got under your bed, I am sure Hilary will gladly apologise for anything she may have said to hurt your feelings. And—and I am sure, as you are so young, and this must be your first offence, that Colonel Baker will not be too hard on you."

"Then you do believe I am a thief!" Margaret exclaimed, staring almost incredulously at Mrs. Danvers. Then without another word she turned abruptly on her heel, and walked towards the door. As she went her foot caught in Mrs. Danver's ball of pink wool; she picked it up, replaced it on Mrs. Danvers' lap, and in another minute was gone from the room. The little action, which was one that she had performed a dozen times a day for Mrs. Danvers since she had been in the house, was sufficient to cause that hapless lady to change her mind again about the character of her holiday governess.

"Oh, no, my dear!" she called out, "I don't, indeed, I don't!"

There was no answer, for Margaret had already shut the door behind her. Mrs. Danvers turned to Hilary:—

"It is all a pack of rubbish that you have been telling me," she said angrily, scarcely knowing what she was saying. "I don't believe a word of it!"

"Just because she picked up your ball of wool!" Hilary exclaimed, with a disdain which, though neither dutiful nor polite, was perhaps not altogether unmerited. "Really, mother!"

Meanwhile Margaret, with anger burning hot within her, had walked straight out of the house. Nothing, she told herself passionately, should induce her to stay a moment longer within it, or ever to enter it again.

Where she was going, or what she was going to do she did not stop to think. The sole idea that possessed her was to get as far away from The Cedars as quickly as she could. Never again, she told herself passionately, would she see or speak to one of the Danvers again. And just as she had come to that resolution she ran full tilt into all of them.

By that time dusk had fallen, and the fog which was coming on thicker than ever, made it almost impossible for any one to see where they were going, so that as she turned a corner of the road which they were approaching from the other direction, she was in the middle of them before she was aware of it. The three girls had met the boys on the parade, and had walked up with them.

"Whither away in such a hurry, Miss Carson?" said Geoffrey, who was the first to recognise her by the light of the street lamp, close to which the encounter took place.

"Ask your mother—ask Hilary," Margaret cried bitterly, and breaking away from him, as he would have detained her, darted across the road, and was immediately swallowed up by the fog.

"Something has happened; she mustn't go like that!" cried Geoffrey, starting after her. But Margaret's movement away from them all had been so sudden and so quick that he could find no trace of her in the dense fog, and realising the hopelessness of pursuit he returned in rather a perturbed frame of mind to the others who were waiting for him by the lamp.

"She was in a right, royal rage," said Maud. "I have never seen Miss Carson angry before. I really didn't know she had it in her."

"Perhaps Hilary has sent her on another message," suggested Nancy.

"Hardly at this hour of the evening," said Edward. "It must be nearly half-past six."

So wondering and speculating as to what could have happened during their absence, but never coming near the truth, they all hurried home as fast as they could, and made their way at once to the drawing-room, where their mother was sitting, looking very helpless and unhappy, while Hilary, with a complacent expression on her face, was telling her all over again of the many and varied clues which had caused her to discover in the person of Miss Carson one of the gang of the Seabourne burglars.

"Why, mother, what is up with Miss Carson?" said Geoffrey at once. "We met her a minute ago running down the road as hard as she could go."

"Running down the road!" echoed Mrs. Danvers. "There, Hilary!" she added, turning to her. "I told you I heard her going out of the hall door, and you said you heard her going upstairs."

"What!" exclaimed Hilary, disregarding her mother altogether. "Miss Carson has escaped! She ought to be brought back. Oh, Geoffrey, why didn't you catch her!"

"I tried to stop her, but she had gone like a flash. But why do you talk about her escaping and of catching her. She isn't a criminal fleeing from justice, is she?"

"But that is just what she is?" cried Hilary triumphantly. "Oh, you have all been finely taken in by her; but I suspected her from the first, and to-night, I have proved her to be a thief and a burglar. I, alone and unaided, have brought her to justice."

"Miss Carson a thief and a burglar!" cried Geoffrey when his astonishment would allow him to speak. "What mad idea have you got into your head now, Hilary?"

Hilary would dearly have liked to have told the long history of the growth of her suspicions about Miss Carson from the very beginning, but knowing that she could not expect the same patient attention from her brothers and sister as her mother had given her, she came straight to the point at once. After all, she was not sure that it was not the most dramatic way of telling her tale.

"I have got no mad idea as you call it, Geoffrey, in my head at all," she said with dignity. "I have merely found out who the Seabourne burglars are, that's all. At least, I have put my hand on one of them, and that one is Miss Carson. This afternoon, locked up in her trunk in the dressing-room upstairs, I found all Colonel Baker's plate and other valuable things."

"Rot!" exclaimed Geoffrey incredulously.

"It isn't rot at all," said Hilary nonchalantly; "it's the truth. But when I taxed her with the crime she denied it."

"Well, of course she did," said Geoffrey. "Of all the nonsense I ever heard this is about the greatest."

Hilary shrugged her shoulders. "Call it nonsense if you like," she said, "but there are the things themselves, every one of them, even to the Indian tablecloth she carried them off in, upstairs in her box at this moment. Go and see them for yourselves if you don't believe me. And if she didn't put them there, who did? Pray tell me that."

Noel looked at Jack, and Jack looked back at Noel. Then they sighed. The moment for confession had undoubtedly arrived, and they both took a step forward.

"We put them there," they said together.

"You!" exclaimed simultaneously every voice in the room except Hilary's, and she was too utterly dumbfounded even to utter that monosyllable.

"It was a joke," said Noel. "Tommy started it really. It was his idea, and he got us to hide the whole of the beastly things here. I am sure we wish we had never seen them. Of course we didn't know the trunk belonged to Miss Carson, or we wouldn't have hidden them in it. We thought it was an old one of mother's that was never used. We would have taken them back to Colonel Baker ages ago, only Tommy, the young idiot! chose to go off to Scotland and took the key with him. We couldn't open the trunk anyhow, though we tried ever so many keys."

"Oh boys, boys!" moaned Mrs. Danvers, "a nice mess you have got yourselves into. The Colonel will be furious. You have made him the laughing stock of the town. He will certainly summons you, and it will get into the papers, and you will certainly be expelled from Osborne and Dartmouth."

"And serve them right too, for a couple of silly young asses!" growled Geoffrey.

"That is all very well," said Hilary, swallowing her intense mortification as well as she could; "but what about this case?" opening it and displaying as she spoke the locket encircled by the string of pearls. "I found it locked up in her dressing bag, and she declares it is hers, although 'To my daughter Margaret' is inscribed inside the locket."

But Geoffrey would not as much as glance at it.

"I think you have behaved disgracefully," he said, turning upon his sister, "and ought to be thoroughly ashamed of yourself. The idea of going prying about in her room."

"I did it in a good cause," said Hilary, who, fully conscious now of the sorry figure she cut, had much ado to keep tears of mortification and rage from coming into her eyes. "How was I to know that the boys had put them into her box and not she herself? It's as much their fault as mine that Miss Carson got accused of taking them."

"Oh, oh, Miss Hilary!" said Edward, "that's rather good from one who not five minutes ago was boasting of having alone and unaided—those were your exact words, I think—brought the criminal to justice."

Hilary winced. She knew that for weeks, perhaps months to come, her brief and inglorious career as a detective would be one of the stock jokes of the family, and the thought of all the chaff she would have to endure was anything but pleasing to her.

"Never mind whose fault it is," said Geoffrey with a touch of impatience in his voice, "what does that matter now? The point is that a girl staying in our house has been terribly insulted and practically driven out of it, and she ought to be found and persuaded to come back, when the first thing you will do, Miss," turning to Hilary, "will be to make her the most abject apology you ever made to any one in all your born days."

"She'll come back of her own accord, surely, by dinner-time," said Mrs. Danvers uneasily.

"Don't you believe it, mother," Geoffrey said emphatically. "When we met Miss Carson just now the very last thought she had in her mind was the intention of ever darkening our doors again."

At that moment Martin opened the drawing-room door. They had all been so intent upon the conversation that was taking place that none of them had heard the sound of wheels upon the gravel a few minutes previously, consequently they were all taken by surprise to see two strangers behind Martin.

"Mr. Anstruther and Miss Eleanor Carson," Martin said, and a tall and thin old man with a long white beard, and a girl who none of them had ever seen before, advanced into the room.



CHAPTER XIV

THE HOUR OF RECKONING

The cheerless weather that had prevailed during the last few days had, as Margaret had foreseen it would, prevented Eleanor from spending her afternoons in the little summer-house, as had been her custom since she had come to Rose Cottage. For bad though the mist was in the town, it was worse on the downs, and the excessive rawness and chilliness of the atmosphere had laid poor Mrs. Murray low with a very bad attack of rheumatism.

As a rule, Eleanor slept soundly from the moment she laid her head on the pillow until she was roused in the morning, but a few nights ago she had been wakened by hearing Mrs. Murray moving about her room. Her first inclination had been to turn round and fall asleep again, but fearing that Mrs. Murray was ill, she had got rather reluctantly out of bed, put on her dressing-gown, and after tapping at Mrs. Murray's door, a useless proceeding, as the poor lady was far too deaf to hear her, had opened it and gone in. She had found Mrs. Murray sitting in her armchair, with her face twisted with pain, rubbing lotion into her rheumatic knee. The candles, which were burning low, showed that she had been awake for some hours.

When she perceived that she had wakened Eleanor, her distress was great, and she begged of her to go back to bed at once.

"My dear," she said, as she poured a fresh supply of embrocation into the hollow of her hand and set to work again, "I never disturb any one in the night if I can help it. Oh dear, how selfish it is of me to keep you out of your bed like this!" This last protest was uttered when Eleanor, taking the bottle from her hand, knelt down on the floor and began to rub the swollen knee.

For the sight of the deaf old lady sitting up in pain and alone, during the night had roused a sudden wave of pity in Eleanor's rather hard heart. A swift feeling of compunction smote her as she reflected how little thought she had taken of Mrs. Murray since she had come to live in her house. All her kindness had been accepted as a matter of course, and when Eleanor found that in return for that kindness no claim of any sort was made upon her, she had been conscious of a feeling of relief. She remembered how she had thought that her time would be far too fully occupied in taking advantage of all the lessons she was going to get to have any over to spend in providing companionship for Mrs. Murray.

For over half an hour Eleanor knelt and rubbed gently and steadily, first with one hand and then with the other, and though Mrs. Murray entreated her over and over again to go back to bed, Eleanor paid no heed to her.

"Think of your studies, my dear," Mrs. Murray said at last; "you won't feel fresh for them, and that will distress you so much to-morrow."

Eleanor winced. In what a selfish light must she have appeared to Mrs. Murray all these weeks if the latter could suppose that the fear of being too sleepy to do her lessons to-morrow would send her post-haste back to bed now!

"Bother my studies!" she said energetically, and Mrs. Murray seeing the uselessness of further protest said no more. But at last she declared that the pain was gone for the moment, and that if she got into bed quickly she might fall asleep before it returned. So Eleanor helped her into bed, and had the satisfaction of seeing her doze off before she left the room. It would be rather too much to say that Eleanor returned to her bed an hour and a half after she had left it with a totally changed character, but she did go back with a clearer recognition of her besetting sin of selfishness than she had ever had before.

"It's always been Eleanor Carson first, Eleanor Carson second, and Eleanor Carson third with me," she thought, "and the rest of the field nowhere. I take all and I give nothing. I am selfish and hard and narrow. Miss McDonald knew it. That was what she meant when she said one day that selfish people didn't know what they missed, and that I should be a happier girl if I thought more of others. Oh dear! there I go again; I don't seem able to leave myself out of consideration for a moment. And if I am only going to be unselfish for the sake of becoming a nicer character myself, I don't see where the true nobility of unselfishness comes in."

Eleanor fell asleep before she had worked that question out to her satisfaction, and all the next day she was too busy practising the quality to have much time to think about it. Madame Martelli had sent up in the morning to say that the sudden change in the weather had given her such a bad cold that she would be unable to receive her pupil until further notice, and as Mrs. Murray had wisely resolved to stay in bed for a few days, Eleanor, with a total disregard for her studies of which a few days ago she really would not have believed herself capable, devoted all her energies to nursing her. She carried all her meals up to her, sat with her, rubbed her knee, gave her her medicine, brought her hot bottles, and generally made a great fuss over her. And Mrs. Murray was so appreciative of all she did that Eleanor told her ruefully she was spoiling it all by being too grateful.

"For, you see," she explained as Mrs. Murray not unnaturally looked much perplexed at this remark, "I wanted to be unselfish and improve my character; but you make it such a pleasure to do anything for you, that if I was really to practise self-denial I would go away and leave you to Hannah."

"All the time I have been with you," she went on suddenly dropping her tone of half-whimsical complaint, and speaking very earnestly, "I have taken all and given nothing. And people who do that must have such hard, selfish natures that I feel dreadfully ashamed of myself."

"My dear, it has been an infinite pleasure to have you with me," said Mrs. Murray, when she had gathered the drift of Eleanor's remark. "Though, owing to my being so deaf, and you being always so busy, we have not perhaps been much together; still, I have enjoyed having you in the house more than I can say. You have been a fresh interest in my rather restricted life, and I shall feel parting with you dreadfully. Ah, how I wish your grandfather would let me keep you altogether! But that, of course, I cannot expect. Did he give you any idea how long he meant you to stay?"

"I—I don't remember," Eleanor said, flushing scarlet. And to herself she thought sadly how completely Mrs. Murray's good opinion of her would change when she knew how she had deceived her. That reflection was really her first step towards repentance, and she was astonished and not a little dismayed to find how rapidly her newly awakened conscience was driving her along to a point where confession would become essential to her own peace of mind. But she had some distance yet to travel before she reached it, and as it happened she missed for ever the opportunity of making a voluntary confession of her misdeeds, for on the afternoon of the day on which Margaret left The Cedars, Mr. Anstruther made a totally unexpected appearance at Rose Cottage.

Mrs. Murray had come downstairs for the first time, and she and Eleanor were sitting over the fire about half-past four enjoying a cosy tea, when the sound of wheels grating on the gravel was heard, and Eleanor saw a cab draw up at the front door. Visitors on such a day when the mist was so thick that even the other end of the lawn was shrouded from view, were totally unexpected, and Eleanor glancing out of the window wondered who the brave people might be who would venture up on to the downs in such weather. But when she saw that the cab was a station cab, and that its passenger was a tall, thin, elderly man, her heart gave a great jump, and then suddenly seemed to sink away into her shoes. She felt sure that this visitor was Mr. Anstruther. She looked at Mrs. Murray, who was just unfolding the Times and preparing herself for an hour or so of peaceful enjoyment. She had heard neither the wheels of the cab on the gravel, nor the ring at the bell, nor did she even look up until Hannah, who had ushered Mr. Anstruther into the room, crossed it herself, and bending over her mistress pronounced his name clearly in her ear.

Eleanor meanwhile stood immovable on the hearth-rug, bracing herself to meet the hour of reckoning that had come so swiftly and in such a totally unannounced manner upon her. She watched Mrs. Murray greet her old friend with mingled surprise and pleasure, and then saw her look with perplexity from him to herself as she stood motionless before the fire. Why, her face mutely asked, did they not greet one another? Why did he merely glance at his granddaughter and bow slightly in his stiff, old-fashioned way as if to a stranger? and why did she give no greeting at all to her grandfather?

"Margaret," she said at last, when the pause had lasted a full thirty seconds, "do you not see your grandfather, dear?"

Mr. Anstruther fairly jumped at that, and shot a keen glance at Eleanor, who still stood rigidly silent with the curious feeling strong on her that the direction of affairs did not lie with her at all. This stern old man who was eyeing her so severely would bring them to a crisis far more swiftly than she was capable of doing. From her expressionless face he looked straight into Mrs. Murray's puzzled, perturbed one. Obviously his first thought was that her mind was as deficient as her hearing. What he saw seemed to convince him that such was not the case, and very deliberately he bent down and spoke loudly and clearly in her ear.

"That girl," pointing a lean accusing finger at Eleanor, "is not my granddaughter Margaret. I never saw her before. Where is Margaret?"



"My dear, is it true?" said Mrs. Murray in a bewildered tone. "I don't understand. If you are not Margaret Anstruther, who are you, and where is she?"

"That is precisely what I wish to know," broke in Mr. Anstruther sternly. "What is this girl doing here, and where is my granddaughter? Do you really mean to say," he added, "that Margaret has not been here at all? What is your name, and what are you doing masquerading here in hers?"

Though Mr. Anstruther in his anger had spoken loudly, he had not used the tone of voice suited to a deaf person, and it was pitiful to see the anxious way in which Mrs. Murray looked from one to the other, striving to hear what was said. So realising that the kindest thing she could do for her now was to tell her story quickly and not allow Mr. Anstruther to drag it from her by means of questions which Mrs. Murray could not hear, Eleanor knelt down by her chair and put her lips close to her ear.

"Shall I tell you everything from the beginning?" she said. "I can do it quickly. My name is Eleanor Carson, and on the 28th of July I was on my way from London to Seabourne to take up a position as holiday governess there, which had been offered to me for the summer holidays. I had to wait at Carden Junction for over an hour and a half, and as I was sitting in the waiting-room a girl came in. We began to talk presently, and she told me her name was Margaret Anstruther and that she was on her way to Windy Gap to stay with a Mrs. Murray, an old friend of her grandfather's, and she was to spend the summer learning Italian and having singing lessons with Madame Martelli. I envied her from the bottom of my heart, and said I wished I was in her shoes, and she said she wished she were in mine. And so in the end we decided to change. She became Eleanor Carson and went on to The Cedars, and I became Margaret Anstruther, and came here."

"The audacity, the unparalleled insolence, the unheard-of irregularity of the whole proceeding astounds me!" said Mr. Anstruther. "And where is my granddaughter now?"

"She is still with Mrs. Danvers at a house called The Cedars, Durham Road, Seabourne," said Eleanor.

"And you mean to say, Charlotte," Mr. Anstruther said loudly, "that you had no idea of the deception that had been practiced on you?"

"No, indeed, how could I have?" said Mrs. Murray, who still seemed almost overpowered by the astonishing revelation that had been made to her. "You must remember that I had never seen your granddaughter, so how could I know?"

"Of your share in this disgraceful business it is not necessary to speak," said Mr. Anstruther, giving Eleanor a glance of the very strongest disapproval and dislike, "but Margaret's share in it concerns me deeply, and first of all I must apologise to you," he added, turning to Mrs. Murray, "in her name for the liberty she has dared to take with your most kind and hospitable house. To send a stranger into it in her place, under her name, and to go off under an assumed one to total strangers seems to be incredible. I can really hardly grasp the amazing fact now, that Margaret, whom I have brought up so carefully, and who has had her every action regulated by me since her infancy, should at the very first opportunity break loose in this manner." He gazed with renewed disapproval at Eleanor. "You must have gained an enormous influence over her in a very short space of time to have been able to persuade her to act in such an outrageous manner."

"It was her idea; she persuaded me into it," said Eleanor, the words slipping out of her mouth unawares. Then fearing that they might sound as though she wished to lay all the blame upon Margaret, she added impulsively, "But it was I who kept her to it so long. She wanted to give up the idea weeks ago, and confess everything, after she had only tried it for two or three days, but I would not let her go back from her word. And so though she has not been nearly so happy with young people as she thought somehow she must be, she has bravely stayed on there for my sake."

Was it merely her imagination or did the severity of Mr. Anstruther's face relax somewhat as he heard that his granddaughter had not been as happy as she had hoped to be? His tone, however, when he spoke again had lost none of its former anger. "Your shameful audacity in impersonating my granddaughter and thrusting yourself, uninvited, into a house in which you have no right, deserves to be severely punished. I am not at all sure that such an offence is not punishable by law. How would you like to find yourself in prison? Mrs. Murray could prosecute you if she liked, and if she takes my advice she will."

"And would you advise Mrs. Danvers to prosecute Margaret?" Mrs. Murray asked.

"Eh—er—that is a different matter altogether," Mr. Anstruther answered, thoroughly taken aback by the unexpected remark.

"Yes, but she, too, impersonated somebody else and thrust herself into a house to which she was not invited," said Mrs. Murray, "so we could hardly put one in prison and leave the other out, could we?"

"Of course, Charlotte, if you are disposed to look upon the matter leniently, nothing more remains for me to say," Mr. Anstruther said in a displeased tone. "I gather, then, that you are not even angry with Miss Carson for her treatment of you. Certainly I have not yet heard you utter one word of blame to her, and when you consider how callously she has deceived you all these weeks no condemnation could be too strong for her."

"I don't believe you are callous, my dear," said Mrs. Murray, looking gently into Eleanor's downcast face.

"Oh, I am ashamed, so dreadfully ashamed!" Eleanor said, "when I think of all your kindness to me, and of how little right I had to any of it."

"And so you ought to be ashamed of yourself," said Mr. Anstruther. "But, however, as I said before, your share in the matter has not so much to do with me as my granddaughter's has. I am going now to see her, and you must come with me. I do not intend to lose sight of you until I have found her. How do I know that you are telling me the truth, and that she is at this particular house you mention?"

Though Eleanor's eyes flashed at this remark, she recognised the justice of it and received it in silence. After all, why should Mr. Anstruther believe anything she said?

"Yes, go, my dear," said Mrs. Murray, and Eleanor rose obediently.

"And if you will take my advice Charlotte, you will get your housemaid to pack her boxes, so that she can leave for good and all the first thing to-morrow," Mr. Anstruther said before she was well out of the room.

He was standing in the hall when she came down with her hat and coat on, and he motioned her to precede him into the cab, but giving her head a little shake, Eleanor opened the drawing-room door and, after hesitating for a moment on the threshold, went in. Mrs. Murray was sitting before the fire crying silently. At the sight of her tears Eleanor's hesitation vanished and she ran across the room and flung herself on her knees and put both her arms in a protecting fashion round the old lady's neck.

"Don't cry about me," she said. "Oh, I am so sorry, so ashamed! I ought never to have done it."

"And I thought you were such a dear girl," said Mrs. Murray, "so good, so straightforward, so merry, and charming. And to think that you were deceiving me all the time. Oh, it is bitter to be disappointed in any one like this! Tell me what tempted you to do it. Mr. Anstruther says it was the thought of living in comparative ease and comfort for a time, and so you sent Margaret to the drudgery of a governess's life in your place."

"No, no," said Eleanor vehemently; "I may be selfish and deceitful, but I am not so calculating as all that. Besides, Margaret has been made no drudge of. As far as mere comfort, food, and good rooms, and so on goes, she has been treated quite as well there as I have here. It was the singing lessons that tempted me. I did want to have my voice trained so much, and when I heard Madame Martelli was going to teach Margaret I just could not help coming in her place."

Though Eleanor was scarcely aware of it herself, her voice and manner had altered when she began to speak of her singing. Neither were any longer repentant or humbled. She spoke as if she were trying to excuse even to justify, her conduct.

"You are neither ashamed nor sorry," said Mr. Anstruther's stern voice from the doorway, "so do not seek to deceive Mrs. Murray on that point. Will you kindly come now. I am waiting."

But when Mr. Anstruther told the driver that he wished to go into Seabourne, the man refused, rather sulkily, to take him across the downs in that mist, "to say nothing of my being stranded miles away from home, then," he said; "but I'll take you back to the station, and from there you can train into Seabourne almost as quick."

So they drove down to Chailfield Station where they were fortunate enough just to catch a train, and on arriving at Seabourne station they took another cab up to The Cedars. During the whole way Mr. Anstruther spoke no single word to his companion, and Eleanor, glancing from time to time at his grim face, fairly shivered as she thought of how Margaret was going to catch it.



CHAPTER XV

AN UNEXPECTED VISITOR

It was in the midst of an astonished silence that Mr. Anstruther, followed by Eleanor, walked up the length of the long drawing-room towards Mrs. Danvers, the young people making way for them as they advanced. When he had arrived opposite her he gave her a stiff bow, which she returned with her eyes fixed on the girl, who had the same name, and yet was not the Eleanor Carson they knew. It was very puzzling, she thought.

"When I have explained the reasons for my presence here this evening, you will agree with me, I trust, that no apology is required for what, so far, must seem to you an unwarrantable intrusion," he began in his most deliberate manner.

"Certainly," murmured Mrs. Danvers, rather vaguely, though she meant, of course, that no apology was needed.

One of the boys—it was Noel—gave a little snigger, but when Mr. Anstruther turned with raised eyebrows in his direction, Noel tried, but without success, to look as if he had made no sound.

"I have come here," Mr. Anstruther resumed then, addressing himself once more to Mrs. Danvers, "in search of my granddaughter Margaret, who, I understand, has been living in your house in the capacity of holiday governess since the 28th of July."

"Margaret Anstruther!" said Mrs. Danvers. "I am very sorry, but I have never heard the name before."

"So I understand, madam," was the grim reply. "My granddaughter has been known to you under the name of Eleanor Carson."

At that the excitement with which the entire family had been listening to him could no longer be restrained, and they broke into a perfect chorus of exclamations and questions. And high above them all Hilary's voice could be heard saying over and over again, "I knew it; I knew it. Perhaps you will believe me now. I always suspected that she was an imposter. Now, perhaps, none of you will contradict me again about her being a thief and a burglar."

Her persistent, exultant tone so dominated all her brothers' and sisters' disjointed exclamations that she eventually silenced them, and her shrill voice finished alone. And when at length she had done, it was to find Mr. Anstruther's piercing eyes gazing attentively at her.

"Young lady," he said, and Eleanor, who had easily identified Hilary as the member of the family whom Margaret liked least, exulted at the thought that she was now going to get a taste of Mr. Anstruther's wrath, "young lady, will you oblige me by repeating quietly and without any display of excitement the extraordinary statement you have just made relative to my granddaughter being a burglar."

But Hilary was not in the least daunted by his icy tones. Hot with indignation at the recollection of the scorn with which her family had received proof of her detective skill, she burst into an eager account of all the suspicions she had entertained about Margaret, and though, fortunately for herself, she did not again say anything about Colonel Baker's silver, she wound up by thrusting the case containing the necklace and the miniature into his hand.

"There," she said triumphantly, "I found that in her dressing bag this afternoon, and when I taxed her with having stolen them, she said——"

"Yes, what did she say?"

"That they were hers."

Mr. Anstruther looked her up and down; then he took the open case from her hand, snapped it to, and slipped it into his pocket.

"And so they are hers," he said. "Does your assertion that my granddaughter is a burglar and a thief rest on any other evidence but this?"

"N—no," faltered Hilary, feeling smaller and of less account than she had ever felt in her life before.

"Then do me the favour of not addressing me again while I remain in this house," said Mr. Anstruther; and turning his back upon the now thoroughly discomfited girl, he resumed his conversation with Mrs. Danvers at the point at which it had been broken off. And Hilary shrank back behind the others, and received scant comfort for the snubbing she had got from any of them.

"I did my best to stop you making such an awful goat of yourself," whispered Edward. "Couldn't you see that that precious bit of proof of yours was just so much evidence for the other side? He had just told us that Miss Carson's name was Margaret Anstruther, and Margaret was written inside the locket, wasn't it, and the initial outside was 'A'?"

Hilary nodded, too mortified even to speak. Now that it was too late she did see the silly, stupid blunder she had made, and she could have bitten out her tongue with annoyance.

"As I was saying, madam," Mr. Anstruther had gone on directly he had finished with Hilary, "my granddaughter has been known to you by the name of Eleanor Carson. This," and he waved his hand in the direction of Eleanor, "is the—the young lady whom you engaged to be your holiday governess. She met my granddaughter at a railway station some way up the line, and decided to change names and addresses. My granddaughter came here, and Miss Carson went up to the house of a friend where I had arranged for my granddaughter to stay; and she deceived this lady as completely as my granddaughter has deceived you."

"Miss Carson not Miss Carson at all!" murmured Mrs. Danvers. "Well, of all the extraordinary things I ever heard! And so it is you," glancing at Eleanor, "that my old friend Miss McDonald sent down to me. Dear me, who would have believed such a thing! I used to wonder sometimes why Miss Carson—Miss Anstruther, I should say—was always so reluctant to speak about Hampstead. Now I suppose it was because she had never been there. Yes, that must have been it. And that accounts, too, for Miss Carson—Miss Anstruther, I mean—speaking in such a queer, stiff way. I think you said she had been brought up entirely at home. It used to seem odd to me that Miss Carson—Miss Anstruther, I mean—should have been a governess in a girls' school for years and years. I forget how long she said she had been at Hampstead, but I know it was a long time, and yet she did not understand a word of slang. That was when she first came here. She has learned to speak rather differently now."

"I regret to hear it, madam," said Mr. Anstruther, who had, with difficulty, restrained himself from interrupting Mrs. Danvers' rambling speech. "I abhor slang in men, women, and boys. In girls I would not tolerate it for one instant. But all this is beside the point. And now, if you please, will you be so kind as to summon my granddaughter. I wish to have an interview with her immediately."

His look was so exceedingly stern, his tone so fraught with ominous meaning as to the reception his erring granddaughter would get when she entered his presence, that scarcely one of the young Danvers but felt glad that the terrific scolding he so evidently had in store for her must inevitably be postponed for the present. And perhaps by the time he did see her his wrath would have had time to cool.

"Where is my granddaughter?" he demanded.

"That is what we should all like to know, sir," said Geoffrey, "but what none of us do know. We were talking of that when you came in. I am sorry to say she has left our house. She has run away. The rest of us were out, and she had a sort of quarrel—a misunderstanding—with one of my sisters——"

"With the one, no doubt, who ransacked her boxes and called her a thief and a burglar," interpolated Mr. Anstruther.

"And she ran straight out of the house. We are hoping she means to come back, but we are very much afraid she will not."

"I am dreadfully upset about it," said Mrs. Danvers helplessly. "If you had only come an hour—even half an hour—ago, you would have found her here safe and sound. If anything happens to her—such a dreadful foggy night as it is, too—I shall never forgive myself for not having known she was going to run away, and stopped her."

"I fail to see any reason for anticipating that harm will come to her," said Mr. Anstruther harshly. He turned to Eleanor, "Perhaps you, Miss Carson, as her accomplice in this disgraceful business, can inform us where she would be likely to go?"

"She would come up to me," Eleanor answered; "that was the agreement we had both made, that if either of us were suddenly found out, or couldn't for any reason continue any longer to be the other, we would come and say so at once. She knows the way quite well; she often came up in the afternoon to see me."

"Yes, but it is one thing to find your way there on a summer's afternoon," said Mrs. Danvers nervously, "but quite another on a night like this. Why, the fog is now so thick that you can't see a yard in front of you down here even; and if it is like that here, it will be ten times worse up on the downs, and instead of finding her way to Windy Gap, she would be far more likely to walk in the opposite direction."

"Oh, don't say that, mother, for the opposite direction would lead her straight over the cliffs," said Geoffrey, and was immediately sorry for his thoughtless remark when he saw how alarmed Mrs. Danvers became; "but I agree with you that she is not very likely to arrive at Windy Gap in such a fog as this, so I suggest that we turn ourselves into a search party without loss of time, and go and look for her."

"One minute, if you please," said Mr. Anstruther; "when you say 'we,' to whom do you refer?"

"Why, to my brothers and myself," Geoffrey answered; "you Noel, and Jack, and Edward. Of course, you will all turn out and search?"

"Rather!" they answered in chorus, and from their eager voices it was easy to see that they looked upon the expedition as a novel and delightful adventure.