"I intend also to accompany you," said Mr. Anstruther.

"Just as you like, of course, sir," said Geoffrey, in rather a doubtful tone, "but if you will excuse my saying so, we would get on quicker without you. You see we know every yard of the way, and my idea was for us all to scatter when we get to the top of the downs, and search separately. We shall cover more ground in less time that way; for I feel perfectly certain that though Miss Anstruther may have started from here with every intention of getting to Windy Gap, she will never find it. The mist will be almost as thick as a London fog, and she will get hopelessly lost. But just on the chance that she may have got as far, I will go up to Windy Gap on my motor bicycle and find out, for it is no good our spending hours searching about on the downs if she is safe and sound there all the time."

He left the room as he spoke, and the three younger boys slipped out quickly after him, each fearing to be the last, lest Mr. Anstruther should persist in accompanying them. The latter, however, recognising that Geoffrey was right, and that his presence would be a hindrance rather than a help, had already given up the idea of joining them.

For once, as Edward remarked, Geoffrey's motor bicycle happened to be in full working order, and in less than five minutes he had his acetylene lamp lighted, and had gone vigorously hooting down the drive. It was then half-past seven; he expected, he said, to be easily back by a quarter past eight with the news whether the fugitive had reached Windy Gap or not. Edward, however, had shaken his head at that, and replied that, what with the bad roads and the fog, he could not be back in anything like that time.

Hardly had Geoffrey gone than the boys were joined by Maud.

"I am coming with you three," she said. "Mother has just asked Mr. Anstruther to dinner, and though I'm pretty hungry, I don't fancy the meal in his society. What a waxy old gentleman it is! and how mother will catch it if she airs any of the slang she has picked up from us!"

The three boys laughed, and when presently, armed with lanterns and bicycle lamps, they set off down the drive, they all amused themselves by repeating and jesting over as many of Mr. Anstruther's caustic remarks as they could remember. They agreed among themselves that poor Margaret must indeed have an awful time of it with him, and that she was highly to be commended for the pluck she had shown in calmly escaping from his authority directly she got the chance.

"But who would have thought she had it in her to go in for a thing of this sort?" said Noel. "The cool cheek of it beats anything I ever heard. I say, I wonder what the other girl—the real Eleanor Carson—is like? She looked frightfully subdued, didn't she? I expect she has been catching it from him pretty well."

The plan that the little band of searchers had formed was to follow the road taken by Geoffrey until they got to the top of the steep brow of the hill, and then, leaving the road, to strike across the grass, for it was probable that Margaret had essayed the short cut to Windy Gap, and that she might be wandering about hopelessly lost not very far from the point where she had left the road. In any case, they resolved not to stay out for more than an hour or so, but to return home at the end of that time and find out what news Geoffrey had of her.

But it was not until the town hall clock was solemnly striking midnight that the four searchers, who had set out so gaily and valiantly at half-past seven, turned wearily in at their own gate. The thing they did not believe possible had happened, and long before the hour they had planned to stay out was over, they were hopelessly lost themselves, and must, as Maud said with a groan, have walked miles and miles before they found themselves quite by chance not far from the point where they had first left the road.

They were tired and hungry, damp, and very cold; and the last time Edward had tripped and tumbled headlong into a furze bush—they had each had so many stumbles and falls that they had lost count of the number they had had—he dropped his new bicycle lamp, and had been unable to find it again. Their expedition could not therefore be termed a success, and Maud said that the last straw would be if they heard directly they got in that Margaret had been found hours ago.

"As, of course, she has been," said Edward, when turning the corner of the drive they saw Geoffrey's bicycle leaning against the porch. "I expect she's in the drawing-room with her grandfather. There seem to be lights everywhere. Well, I'm going to make a bee-line for the dining-room for grub. We had a very sketchy lunch, no tea, and no dinner, so I think we've earned something."

So as soon as they got into the house, the three boys went off in the direction of the dining-room, but Maud, although she was hungry enough too, felt that she must first hear if Miss Anstruther had been found. Considering that lights were burning everywhere, the house seemed strangely silent, and Maud was beginning to wonder if every one had gone to bed, when the door leading from the pantry opened, and Martin, without seeing her, followed the three boys into the dining-room, closing the door after him. Yes, that must be it, Maud thought—every one must have gone to bed, and he had shut the door lest their voices might disturb the household. She was just about to go to the dining-room too, when the sound of some one crying violently in the drawing-room came to her ears, and rather hesitatingly she opened the door and went in.

Hilary and Eleanor Carson were alone there together. The latter, with her elbows on her knees and her head buried in her hands, was sitting motionless in a chair near the fire, and Hilary was crouched in a huddled-up position on the ground by a sofa into the cushions of which she was sobbing.

As Maud came in Eleanor lifted her head and stared at her for a moment. Then she dropped her face again into her hands without a word. Brief as was the glimpse that Maud had got of her face, she was startled beyond measure at the expression it wore. It was as white as a sheet of paper, and her eyes, though dry and tearless, were full of grief and misery.

"Hilary!" Maud said in an awed tone. She did not venture to address Eleanor. "What is it? Where is Miss Anstruther?"

But she had to cross the room and repeat the question with her hand on her sister's shoulder before the latter heard her.

Then Hilary lifted her face in turn and stared vacantly at her sister. It was so blurred and swollen with incessant crying that if Maud had not known it was her sister who lay crouched there before her, she could scarcely have recognised her.

"Miss Anstruther is dead!" she wailed. "She fell over the cliffs and was killed. And it is all my fault. If I hadn't——" But at that point her tears, which never ceased for an instant, choked her further utterance, and letting her head drop back on the cushions, she went on crying.

Seeing that it would be as useless as it was cruel to question Hilary further, and still not daring to disturb the rigid, stony silence in which Eleanor sat, Maud hurried, horror-struck at what she had heard, from the room, and crossing the hall, went into the dining-room. The three boys were seated at the table eagerly devouring some hot soup, which Martin, whose face was very grave, had had in readiness for them.

Evidently he had not told them the dreadful news, and checking the questions which had been on the point of rising to her lips, Maud beckoned him from the room. He came out, carefully closing the door behind him.

"It's no use upsetting the young gentlemen by letting them know about it to-night," he said in a low tone. "They had better be got off to bed as soon as possible."

"It is really true, then?" Maud said, feeling sick at heart.

"I am afraid there is no doubt about it, Miss. It was a coastguardsman that told Master Geoffrey about it. He had been up to Windy Gap and heard that Miss Anstruther had not been seen there. And then coming back, he lost his way—went clean off the road in the dark, and then couldn't find it again for ever so long. He might have gone over the cliffs himself, Miss Maud. Then he met a coastguardsman and told him he was out looking for a young lady and asked him if he had seen her, and then the man said that about eight o'clock a young lady had fallen over the cliffs, just beyond the lighthouse, and had been picked up in a dying condition on the rocks below. They had taken her along the beach until they got to the end of the sea-wall, and then they had telephoned for an ambulance, and she was taken to the hospital, for, of course, they didn't know her name or where she lived then."

At that moment the three boys stumbled wearily into the hall rubbing their eyes. "I say, we're off to bed," said Noel. "Martin says that Miss Anstruther hasn't come back yet, but we can't do anything more, he thinks, so as we can scarcely keep our eyes open, we are going to turn in. Go and have some grub, Maud, and do likewise." And yawning their heads off as they went, the three boys trailed up to bed, far too sleepy to notice Maud's silence and horror-struck face.

"And Mr. Geoffrey has gone down to the hospital with Mr. Anstruther," continued Martin, as soon as the boys were out of earshot. "They were obliged to walk, for there wasn't a cab about when Mr. Geoffrey came back, for it was then close on eleven, and they wouldn't wait until I went to get one from the livery stables up the road. And now, Miss Maud, you must come and have something to eat. You had no dinner."

But Maud turned away with a little shake of the head. The mere idea of food was distasteful to her. She asked where her mother was. Martin was about to answer that his mistress was upstairs with Miss Joan and Miss Nancy, when the sound of footsteps coming at racing speed up the drive was heard, and the next moment Geoffrey dashed breathless and hatless into the house. "I say," he panted out as soon as he could speak, "it's all right. It wasn't Miss Anstruther who fell over the cliffs. It was somebody else altogether. A visitor at one of the hotels, they say. Poor thing, she has been terribly injured, and won't live till the morning, I believe. But the point is that it wasn't Miss Anstruther. Where are Hilary and poor Miss Carson? I must tell them at once."

He broke away from Maud, who would have detained him with a dozen eager questions, and burst into the drawing-room, shouting out his good news as he went.

Hilary, who was still crying—she had cried steadily for over two hours—received his news with a scream of joy, but though Eleanor heard it much more quietly, no one looking at her could fail to see how deeply she was moved to thankfulness.

The Danvers could only dimly realise how great her suffering had been during the last two hours, ever since Geoffrey had returned from the downs and in an awestruck tone, and with halting, stammering speech had broken to them all the news of the catastrophe which had, so he then thought, overtaken Margaret. Hilary had at once broken out into the noisy grief and passionate self-reproaches which she had kept up without intermission ever since, but Eleanor's agony of mind had lain too deep for outward expression. She knew that if Margaret had really been killed, she would never have been able to forgive herself. The awful thought that it was she who was responsible for her death would never have left her, and now that the strain of those terrible hours was over, Eleanor could only look back upon the utter blackness of despair that had been hers through every minute of them with a shudder.

Then Mrs. Danvers who had been upstairs with her two nieces, for Joan had had an attack of crying only second in intensity to that to which Hilary had given way, informed by Martin of the good news which Geoffrey had brought, came down, followed by Nancy and Joan in their dressing-gowns, to share in the general rejoicing, and presently Mr. Anstruther returned, having been driven up in a motor by one of the doctors who had been at the hospital.

And Mr. Anstruther's harshness and anger against his erring granddaughter was now a thing of the past. Though he had given scarcely more outward sign of his inward feelings than Eleanor, the tragic fate that he had believed to have overtaken Margaret had so appalled and shaken him that the escapade of which she had been guilty had sunk to but insignificant proportions in his eyes, and had she only returned now he would have uttered no word of blame to her.

But meanwhile she had not come back, and they were as far off as ever from knowing what had become of her, although in the general relief and gladness that for anything they knew to the contrary at least she was still alive, they had temporarily lost sight of that fact.

It was Mr. Anstruther who reminded them of it by mentioning that the doctor who had so kindly driven him up to The Cedars had taken him round to the police station on the way, where he, Mr. Anstruther, had given the sergeant on duty a brief description of his granddaughter. This was to be immediately telephoned to all the policemen on their night beats. The sergeant had also telephoned up to the coastguard station, telling them that the poor girl at the hospital was not the missing young lady, and to ask them to keep a sharp look-out for her on the cliffs all night, and to ring up the police station at once if anything was seen or heard of her.

Though Geoffrey's first search had proved so barren of result, he announced his intention of going up on to the downs again, this time on foot, and Maud volunteered to go with him. Her mother would have preferred her to go to bed, but she scouted that notion. Hilary, however, and the two Green girls, were glad enough to go docilely off to bed, and when Maud and Geoffrey, fortified with sandwiches and soup, had departed with freshly filled lanterns on a second expedition, Eleanor and Mr. Anstruther and Mrs. Danvers were left alone in the drawing-room together to get through the intervening hours of waiting as best they could.

Mr. Anstruther had deprecated the idea of Mrs. Danvers sitting up, but she had averred that she had no desire either to go to bed or to sleep. The former statement might have been true, but the latter was soon contradicted by the gentle snores which emanated from the direction of her chair. Mr. Anstruther sat so still that he, too, might have been asleep, but Eleanor, glancing at him once or twice, saw that his eyes were wide open and gazing fixedly before him. After awhile, his utter immobility no less than Mrs. Danvers' regular snoring, got on Eleanor's nerves, and rising quietly she slipped from the room, closing the door softly behind her.

The lights were burning in the hall, and there she kept her lonely vigil, pacing up and down. The slow hours wore away, two o'clock, three o'clock struck, and still Geoffrey and Maud did not return. The huge relief and joy she had felt when Geoffrey had come back from the hospital with the news that the girl who had fallen over the cliffs was not Margaret had long since ebbed away, and the anxiety to know what had become of her was almost torturing in its intensity. She wondered how any one in the house could sleep, or how Mr. Anstruther could sit patiently hour after hour by the fire waiting for news. Then she remembered that at least his conscience was at ease, for it was through no fault of his that his granddaughter was wandering about on the downs on such a dreadful night, and she envied him, envied any one who was not, like herself, burdened with remorse, and that awful sense that had grown up with her anxiety that, for whatever might befall Margaret that night, she alone was directly responsible.

Eleanor was seeing things very clearly that night, and quite dispassionately she told herself that she hated her own character. It was selfish through and through. The specious plea with which she had salved her conscience heretofore, that Margaret had been far the more eager of the two for the mutual exchange of their names, she brushed aside as worthless. Though there was little difference in their ages, Margaret was, as regarded experience of the world, a mere child compared to her, and she felt that in acceding to the deception she had been like a grown-up person cheating a child. Of course, Margaret had been old enough to know the difference between right and wrong, but that was no excuse for her; she ought not to have taken advantage of her.

The sting of shame she had felt before. Mrs. Murray's unvarying kindness and the gratitude she showed for any little mark of attention or service rendered to her while she had been ill, had made Eleanor both remorseful and ashamed, but her repentance then had not led to amendment. Even while she had been deeply ashamed of herself, she had known that, for the sake of her voice, she would have done it all over again, deceived Mrs. Murray, taken advantage of Margaret, held her, in spite of her tears, to her word, sacrificed her own truth and honesty to her ambition.

And this was the pass to which her ambition had brought her. Even though Margaret's death was not mercifully to be laid at her door, as for two long, never-to-be-forgotten hours that night she had feared, who could tell what the effects of a night of exposure and fright on the downs might not have upon her constitution?

No wonder, then, that with those miserable thoughts for company, Eleanor could not rest. But her repentance if tardy was at least sincere. Could the clock of time have been put back seven weeks, and were she and Margaret to be meeting now for the first time in the dingy little waiting-room at Carden Station, ah, how differently would she act! Not for the sake of being the greatest singer in the whole round world would she have consented to the deception. Rather would she have drudged as a poorly paid teacher in second-rate schools all the days of her life.

"Oh—if I could only have the time over again!" groaned Eleanor. It seemed such a small thing to wish for she thought despairingly. Just seven short weeks over again.

At five o'clock Mr. Anstruther opened the drawing-room door and came out into the hall. He did not see Eleanor who, wearied out at length with her ceaseless pacing to and fro, had flung herself down a few-minutes previously on Nancy's favourite couch behind the screen, but the ever watchful Martin came forward immediately, and though his offer of coffee was declined, he was permitted to help Mr. Anstruther into his overcoat. From the brief colloquy that ensued between them Eleanor gathered that he was going down to the police station. As soon as he had left she sprang up and went out into the garden. The long and seemingly endless night was at least over, and surely with daylight they might hope for news of Margaret. The morning had broken cold and chilly, but the mist was sweeping away in great rolling clouds before a light easterly breeze that had sprung up at dawn.

At six o'clock Geoffrey and Maud came home. Eleanor, who then was pacing up and down the drive, was the first to greet them, and her heart sank when, in answer to her eager look, they shook their heads. They had neither seen nor heard anything of Margaret.

"But no news is at least good news," said Geoffrey, quickly seeing how sick at heart she looked, and remembering the news with which he had returned the time before, she could not but agree with him there. "We have scoured the downs between here and Windy Gap thoroughly, and I am beginning to believe that she never tried to get there at all. We have just come straight back from there now. Mrs. Murray has been up all night with a hot bed, and hot blankets, and a hot bath, and all sorts of other hot things, waiting for Miss Anstruther directly she turns up. And her coachman and a couple of men from the village have been beating about on the downs most of the night. I really believe she has crept into a rabbit hole and means to lie low until all this fuss has blown over."

Though this remark did not succeed in bringing a smile to Eleanor's pale lips, his cheery manner insensibly comforted her, and she turned and walked back to the house with him and Maud, feeling that the load of her trouble was somewhat lightened by their society.

"Hot soup again, Martin!" Geoffrey exclaimed, as the servant made his appearance with a tray bearing some steaming cups directly they entered the house, "we really can't do it. What with you at this end of the journey, and Mrs. Murray at the other, this night has been a perfect picnic of hot soup."

"It's not soup, Master Geoffrey, it's coffee," said Martin imperturbably.

"Oh, if it's coffee I am on for some. You must have some, too, Miss Carson. You look a perfect wreck. I expect you have had a harder time of it than we have."

Eleanor shook her head. His sympathetic tone made her lower lip tremble. "I have done nothing all night—" she said, "but wait," she added.

"And awfully hard work that must have been by the look of you," he said; "and where is everybody, Martin?"

"The mistress is in the drawing-room, Mr. Anstruther has gone down to the police station, and the rest of the young ladies and gentlemen are in bed. And I think, Mr. Geoffrey, if you and Miss Maud went to bed now, too, it would be a good thing."

"Go to bed at half-past six in the morning! What an idea! Do you want to go to bed, Maud?"

"No," she answered promptly; "but what I do want is a stinging hot bath. That would freshen me up wonderfully. Come and have one, too, Miss Carson. It would do you a world of good."

Eleanor did not feel as if she particularly wanted a hot bath at that moment, but both Maud and Geoffrey so strongly advocated her taking one that out of gratitude to them for the sympathy they evidently desired to show her, she followed them upstairs. After all, she might as well have a bath as do anything else; it would at least help to pass the time. And when she had had her bath and done her hair, and was dressed and downstairs again, she certainly felt wonderfully better for it. The horrid sort of up-all-night feeling that she had experienced had quite left her.

Presently the whole household was astir. Mrs. Danvers, firmly convinced that she had been awake all night, left the drawing-room when the housemaid entered it and went upstairs, intending to have a bath and dress, but she went to bed instead.

To escape the curious eyes of the servants, who now seemed to be in every room and to be regarding her with not unnatural curiosity, Eleanor wandered out into the hall again and resumed the restless pacing to and fro which she had kept up the greater part of the night. By eight o'clock she seemed to have the principal sitting-rooms to herself. Geoffrey and Maud had not yet come downstairs, and the servants, having finished their dusting and sweeping, had gone to their breakfast.

Consequently when the telephone bell in the morning-room rang sharply she was the first person to hear it. Hurrying toward it with the wild hope that at last she was to hear news of Margaret, she caught up the receiver.

"Hullo!" she heard, "are you there? Is that The Cedars? Mrs. Danvers? Who then? I can't hear—Carson?—Eleanor Carson, you say? What! the young lady who has been impersonating my wife's niece? Yes, I know all about it. Yes—yes, I am telling you. Margaret Anstruther is here. I found her myself, not half an hour ago, in a wood shed in the wood at the back of our house here. She lost her way on the downs last night trying to get to Mrs. Murray's. Yes—yes, well and safe. My wife has sent her to bed. She has a temperature and a bad cold in the head. We have sent for a doctor. No—no not ill, but it is best to be on the safe side. And I sent a motor off ten minutes ago to let Mrs. Danvers know she is safe——" But the rest was a buzzing noise only. Either they had been cut off or Sir Richard had abruptly stopped speaking.

But Eleanor had heard enough. Margaret was safe. In her intense relief and joy at the news Eleanor let the receiver fall with a clang, and when Geoffrey and Maud, having heard her voice at the telephone, came flying downstairs, they found her shedding tears of joy.

"Margaret is found!" she said in glad accents. "Sir Richard Strangways has just telephoned." And she repeated to them the substance of what she had heard.

"I wonder why they did not send her back here," said Maud presently, when their first excitement was over.

"Because Margaret has evidently told them everything," replied Eleanor. "For Sir Richard spoke of her as Margaret, and, of course, they know now that she, not I, is Lady Strangways' niece."

"Is she really Lady Strangways' niece?" said Maud, in the wildest astonishment, "but they did not seem to know each other."

"They didn't," said Eleanor, "or, of course, our plot would have been found out at once. It's rather a long story to tell you now, but the gist of it is that as Lady Strangways has been out of England for years she and Margaret had never met. And so when Mrs. Murray told her that she had a niece of Mr. Anstruther's staying with her—meaning me then, of course—I had to pretend to be her niece. But she didn't take to me," added Eleanor ruefully.



CHAPTER XVI

CONCLUSION

After that events moved very quickly. When a few minutes later Mr. Anstruther returned in a cab, he was met on the doorstep by most of the members of the family, who crowded round him and shouted out the good news that his granddaughter was found.

"Margaret at Wrexley Park!" he said, when he had alighted from the cab and could make his voice heard. "How exceedingly strange that she should have found her way there!"

"Well, I don't know," said Geoffrey. "If one shot by Windy Gap, which is what she must have done in the darkness, she had only to keep on and on and she would be bound to strike Wrexley next. You see, sir, it lies right under the lee of the downs."

"Quite so, quite so," said Mr. Anstruther patiently. "But when I commented on the singularity of the circumstance which had directed the steps of my granddaughter towards Wrexley, I was not referring so much to the relative geographical positions of Windy Gap and Wrexley, with which indeed I am unacquainted, but——"

"You were thinking how funny it was that she should have fetched up at her own aunt's house in the end," broke in Maud, for which unceremonious interruption she received a glance of reproof from Mr. Anstruther, and scant thanks afterwards from the other members of the family who had been hanging delightedly on Mr. Anstruther's careful phraseology, and who had all wanted to hear him finish his remark for himself.

Then Mr. Anstruther went up to Eleanor, who was standing a little apart from all the others, and after subjecting her to a moment's severe scrutiny, spoke abruptly:—

"I am glad your anxiety is at an end. I think you have been sufficiently punished."

Eleanor smiled a little tremulously. The punishment had indeed been sharp, although it had been nothing but the voice of her own conscience.

"Can you forgive me?" she said.

"Yes," he answered, in his cold, precise accents, "I can now. Though I make no secret of the fact that, had my just resentment against you not been softened by the anxiety we have shared in common, my reply to that question would have been in the negative."

Then the motor from Wrexley having arrived, Mr. Anstruther made his formal farewells and drove away, followed, it must be confessed, by a sigh of universal relief at his departure.

When he had gone Eleanor became conscious that her position in the house was rather a peculiar one. She had been dumped there, she reflected, just as if she had been a bale of goods, and the person who had brought her had neglected to remove her again. But, at any rate, she could remove herself, and that she would do as speedily as possible, and she was on the point of saying good-bye to Mrs. Danvers when the sound of wheels was heard on the gravel, and up drove Mrs. Murray in her pony carriage.

She had arrived to fetch Miss Carson, she said, when Geoffrey, who had become very friendly with her during his nightly visits, went out to her. No, she would not alight. Yes, she had heard the good news about Miss Anstruther. Could Miss Carson come at once, as Punch and Judy were already very cross at having been taken out at that hour in the morning, and would not stand.

The ponies' bad behaviour spared Eleanor the embarrassment of prolonged farewells, nor had she even the chance of making the apology to Mrs. Danvers, which she knew she owed her, but hastily flinging on her hat and coat, she ran out at once and took her seat beside Mrs. Murray, and the next minute they were bowling at a smart trot down the drive. Eleanor was touched to the quick by this act of kindness on Mrs. Murray's part.

"But you should not have come out so early in the morning after you have been in the house for so many days," she said.

"My dear," said Mrs. Murray, "it will have done me no harm. I wanted to come and fetch you back myself."

Except for those two remarks the drive was accomplished almost in silence. And Eleanor was only too glad not to have to speak. The reaction after the long strain of the night was beginning to tell at length on her and she was almost too tired to keep her eyes open.

She wondered if Mrs. Murray would let her go to bed when they got to Rose Cottage, or if she must pack her box and take her departure then and there. But Mrs. Murray set her doubts on that point at rest directly they reached home by telling her to go straight to bed. "And sleep as long as you can," she added.

"But," said Eleanor, hanging back as Mrs. Murray gave her a gentle little push towards the staircase, "if I sleep too late I shan't be able to leave to-night."

"I will wake you in time to catch the train I wish you to catch," Mrs. Murray said. And Eleanor said no more, but stumbled wearily upstairs, thinking as she went that, of course, she had not expected that Mrs. Murray would let her stay even to the end of the holidays, now some eight or ten days distant, but she had not guessed that she would be turned out of the house quite so summarily and even have her train chosen for her. However, the thought just passed through her mind; she was far too weary to dwell upon it, and in less than five minutes she was in bed and fast asleep.

And she slept the whole day without waking, and while she was thus occupied Mrs. Murray went down to Wrexley Park and saw the real Margaret, the girl who should have come to her, but who had elected to do otherwise.

Fresh from an interview she had just had with her grandfather, in which, though true to the resolution he had formed not to blame her very severely, he had been unable to refrain from letting her know how heinous he considered her conduct, Margaret was too nervous and upset to be at ease in Mrs. Murray's presence, and that lady, though making every allowance for her perturbed, conscience-stricken state of mind, could not help contrasting her constrained, embarrassed manner unfavourably with Eleanor's frank, bright demeanour. And Mrs. Murray felt convinced that the real Margaret would never have been as happy with her as her substitute had been.

In more ways than one that day, the first she had passed for many weeks under her own name, was a very trying one for Margaret. She would gladly have spent it in bed, as Eleanor had done, but as the doctor who had come to see her had pronounced her little the worse for her night in the wood shed, there had been no excuse for her to stay in bed, and she had been obliged, about eleven o'clock, to get up to see her grandfather first, then Mrs. Murray, and later in the morning Mrs. Danvers, and Hilary, who had been brought out to Wrexley to apologise for her outrageous behaviour of the day before. Mrs. Danvers had been naturally anxious to know where Margaret had passed the night while search had been so vainly made for her, and she could scarcely believe that mere chance had indeed led Margaret across the downs to Wrexley woods in the darkness. And yet such, as Geoffrey had surmised, had been the case. Trying to reach Windy Gap Margaret had passed close by it in the fog and had wandered on and on until, somewhere about midnight, she had found herself at the entrance to a small hut in the wood, and, thankful beyond words to be in shelter of some sort, she had crept into it and, making herself as comfortable as she could on some dry faggots of sticks, had fallen sound asleep. And she had been still sleeping when Sir Richard, who usually took a stroll before breakfast every morning, had come suddenly upon her. But when Margaret, who said that she freely forgave Hilary—as, indeed, she did—for all her unkindness and foolish suspicions about her, would have apologised in her turn for the deception she had practised upon her, that good-natured lady checked her at once.

"My dear," she said, "I can't see that you did me any harm. You made the children an excellent holiday governess, and you were always so kind about winding my wool and picking up my stitches that I shall miss you dreadfully. So say no more about the wrong you did me. I am quite sure that I liked you a great deal better than I should have liked the real Miss Carson, though I dare say she might have got on better with my young people. You have heard, of course, that it was my two boys, Noel and Jack, who put all those things in your box. Oh, not with a view to getting you into trouble, but it was a prank they had played off upon Colonel Baker. I made them go down and confess to him this morning and take his property back with them, and, judging from their crestfallen looks ever since, I fancy they have had a talking-to that they won't forget in a hurry. So they have been well punished, and Tommy has been wired to to come home at once, so he has been punished. And Hilary's punishment here is to come. It will take the form of such endless banter and chaff from her brothers and sisters that it will be a long time before she thinks of playing private detective to any one in my house again."

That Margaret, too, had been punished for her conduct no one knew better than herself. Not only had she suffered from a troubled conscience for the last seven weeks, but she had been distinctly unhappy in the uncongenial surroundings into which she had forced herself, and for that she had no one but herself to thank. Nevertheless, although she fully recognised how much she had been to blame in breaking loose as she had done, she had learned, from seeing the lives of other girls, that her grandfather's rigorous rule over her was as absurd as it was unjust. She was eighteen and she was treated as though she were eight. Why, even Daisy and David had far more liberty of action than she was allowed. She looked forward with positive dread to the thought of going back to Greystones and resuming the queer, solitary life she had led there since Miss Bidwell had left.

But her surprise was unbounded when she learned, as she did later in the afternoon of the same day, that Greystones was never again to be her home. "Though, of course, my dear Margaret, Miss Bidwell and I—that is to say, my future wife and I, for Miss Bidwell is doing me the honour of becoming my wife on the 9th of next month—will always be pleased to see you there on very long visits whenever and as often as you like to come."

For it was in that manner that Mr. Anstruther broke the news to Margaret of his intended marriage to her late governess. As it had already transpired in conversation with Mrs. Murray, he had spent the last fortnight in the little German town where Miss Bidwell was staying with friends and undergoing treatment for her eyes, and it was because he had given no directions for his letters to be forwarded that Mrs. Murray had had no answer to the last two she had written him. It was for the purpose of telling her and Mrs. Murray that he was shortly to be married to Miss Bidwell that he had come to Windy Gap the previous day and also to learn if Mrs. Murray would consent to keep his granddaughter with her for some months longer. However, as he was at some pains to explain to Mrs. Murray at the sort of family conclave that was being held that morning at Wrexley Park, "As she has not been with you at all and seeing in what an ungrateful spirit she treated your kind invitation to her, I cannot expect you to be willing to receive her into your house. I must therefore endeavour to make other arrangements for her. I should like to add that it is in no spirit of vindictiveness towards her that I wish her now to make her home elsewhere, but because I am convinced that it would not be for her happiness to reside permanently at Greystones now that her late governess will be installed there as mistress. Miss Bidwell is a lady of very strong character and might continue to look upon Margaret as a child and to treat her as such." He paused for a moment and then added, "I realise now that a girl of eighteen requires more liberty of thought and action than I permitted to Margaret."

That was the only admission Mr. Anstruther was ever heard to make that perhaps his system of education was not as perfect as he had deemed it, but coming from him it meant a good deal.

But it was then that Lady Strangways had intervened with a suggestion of her own.

"Let me have her, Mr. Anstruther," she said, "After all, I am her aunt, and I should like nothing better than to adopt her as my daughter. I have taken a great fancy to Margaret and she to me. I fancy I could make her very happy if she would consent to come to me."

"I think her consent may be taken for granted," said Mr. Anstruther in his old arbitrary manner and quite forgetting his admission of a few moments back; "she is still considerably under age and is therefore subject to my orders until she attains her majority."

"But I should not care in the least for a daughter who was ordered to love me," said Lady Strangways, smiling.

However, when Margaret was summoned to the library and her aunt's suggestion made known to her, the radiant look of happiness with which she received it left no one, least of all Lady Strangways, in doubt of her willingness to obey this last command of her grandfather's.

And so Margaret's immediate future being satisfactorily settled, Mrs. Murray went back to Windy Gap. She found Eleanor in her room on her knees before her open trunk which she was busily engaged in packing.

Very deliberately Mrs. Murray closed the trunk, and, perhaps because all the available chairs were strewn with Eleanor's clothes, sat down on the lid.

"Lady Strangways has adopted Margaret," she said.

"Oh," exclaimed Eleanor eagerly, "I am glad! Margaret will like that. She had already fallen in love with her aunt, and will like nothing better than to be with her. How is she after last night?"

"Quite well, except for a very bad cold in her head. But I will tell you all about her adventures presently. It is of you I want to speak now." Suddenly she bent forward and put her hands on Eleanor's shoulders. "Eleanor, dear," she said, "will you let me adopt you as Lady Strangways has adopted Margaret? I would not make the offer, dear, if you had any relations of your own to go to. A lonely, deaf old woman has not much to offer to a young girl like you with all her life before her, but it would be such a pleasure to feel that I had you to live for. Hush, don't answer yet. Lady Strangways has told me all about you—as much, at least, as she had learned from Margaret. And I know all about your wonderful voice and the possibilities that lie in front of you, if you can have proper training. I am not a wealthy woman, but I have more than enough for both of us, and if you will stay with me we will go to Paris, Milan, or any other place that Madame Martelli says you ought to go to. And you shall have the best teaching in Europe."

What answer Eleanor made to this astoundingly splendid offer neither she nor Mrs. Murray could ever remember. It is doubtful, indeed, if she made any in words, for after trying once or twice to speak she gave up the attempt and cried out of pure joy.

But apparently Mrs. Murray was quite satisfied with this answer, for her kind old face, which had worn an anxious look while waiting for Eleanor's reply, took on a most contented expression.

"But your dear little home," Eleanor said presently when her tears were dry, and being such happy ones they had dried very quickly. "How will you like to leave that?"

"I am tired of my dear little home," said Mrs. Murray briskly. "I want to travel. Besides, the doctor has told me that in any case I mustn't spend another winter here until I get my rheumatism out of my system. And so, my dear, we will be off as soon as you like."

* * * * *

Eleanor and Margaret only met once before the former started for Italy with Mrs. Murray. Madame Martelli had recommended a course of study at Milan, and armed with many introductions to musical people of note, they were to leave almost immediately for that town.

Margaret had motored up to Rose Cottage with her aunt to say good-bye, and the two girls had gone out into the garden together. By common consent their steps led them towards the little summer-house where they had held so many stolen interviews.

"Strictly speaking," said Eleanor, "neither of us deserve to be as happy as we are. At least," she added, "I know I don't. We behaved disgracefully—at least I know I did. And yet, in the end, we have got everything we wanted."

"Would you do it again?" Margaret asked.

Eleanor shook her head most emphatically. "No," she said, "if I live to be ninety I shall never forget that long night. I would not go through it again on any account whatever—at least, I mean, you know that I would not again risk anything happening to you through me."

"Not even for the sake of your voice?" said Margaret rather wonderingly.

"No," said Eleanor firmly, "not even for the sake of my voice. If you had been killed that night I should never, never have forgiven myself. I feel now that it would have served me perfectly right if you had tumbled over the cliff and been killed. It would have been only what I deserved, for then I should have been obliged to suffer from a life-long remorse."

"Oh!" said Margaret rather doubtfully. Then she laughed. "Don't you think," she asked, "that it would have been rather hard on me if you had been punished like that?"

Eleanor laughed too. "I must say that I wasn't thinking of you at the moment," she said; "to forget other people's feelings was always a trick of mine, as you know; however, I really am reforming fast. By the way, have you seen anything of the Danvers since you left them?"

"I saw Hilary in the town, and she stopped to speak to me. She is reforming, too," Margaret added, with another smile. "I seem to be having quite an improving effect upon other people's characters. She told me that one reason why she took such a dislike to me was because she was afraid that I would accept her sister's offer to go out to Los Angelos with her in the spring as her governess, and that she had been jealous of me because she wanted to go herself. But the funny part is," continued Margaret, "that now she no longer wants to go either; her latest idea is to go to Girton, and she is going to read hard with a tutor at home all this winter so that she can pass the necessary examinations in the spring."

"And a very good thing for her too," said Eleanor; "if she had had more to occupy herself with this summer, she wouldn't have busied herself so disastrously with our affairs. I am afraid she made you very unhappy while you were there, and I, like a selfish oyster, sat tight here and kept you out of your rightful place."

"I am very glad you did," said Margaret earnestly, "or perhaps I might never have gone to live with Aunt Helen."

"You mean, you think that Mrs. Murray would never have given you up to her," said Eleanor with twinkling eyes. "You need not be afraid, Margaret, Mrs. Murray likes me much better than she would have ever liked you; she as good as told me so."

"And Aunt Helen likes me best," retorted Margaret.

"All's well that end's well, then," said Eleanor laughing; "though, mind you, I must candidly confess that I don't believe that that is a very moral reflection to apply to the end of our conspiracy. However, as we have been forgiven all round, and as we really did no one any harm, we need not be very severe on ourselves.

"But don't forget, Margaret, that I was your first friend; the first girl, with the exception of your dream-friend Eleanor, that you ever spoke to. And you will write to me regularly, won't you, dear?"

"Oh yes, I will write," Margaret answered, smiling a little wistfully; "but I do not believe you will answer many of my letters. You will be so full of your own interests, and so busy getting famous, that I shall soon drop out of your remembrance."

"Never!" said Eleanor with a passionate vehemence that fairly startled Margaret. "Please, please, Margaret, get it out of your head that I am the selfish, hard sort of person you first knew. I shall never forget the girl who helped me out of my shallows and miseries and set me afloat on my full sea. You will only come second in my affections to Mrs. Murray, to whom I shall simply never be able to repay all her kindness and goodness, so if you want to hurt me, Margaret, accuse me again of fickleness and ingratitude."

"But I don't wish to hurt you," Margaret protested. "You know, Eleanor, I am only too pleased to have you for a friend. Let us always be friends, Eleanor dear."

"We always will," Eleanor declared. "It is the fashion to laugh at girls' vows of eternal friendship. I laughed at them myself, you know, for have I not lived four years in a girls' school! But no one need trouble to laugh at our vows, Margaret, for I know you to be a faithful little soul, and I owe you far too much ever to cease to love you."

THE END.