"I have finished these, Mrs. Danvers," she said quietly; "is there anything else you would like me to do?"
Margaret had certainly gained in self-possession since she had come to The Cedars. A fortnight ago if she had heard a remark of that sort about herself she would have rushed in tears from the room, but now she seemed to guess intuitively that the right thing and the kindest thing to do was to pretend not to have heard it. Certainly from her manner Maud would never have guessed that her speech had been overheard. Nevertheless, she knew that Miss Carson could not have failed to hear every word, and flushing darkly even through the sunburn of her cheeks, she fled out of the room by the window, literally without a word to say for herself. And when Mrs. Danvers attempted an apology on her daughter's behalf it was Margaret's turn to show embarrassment.
"Please, please," she said earnestly, "do not think that I mind what Maud said. You are all very kind to me, and Maud is quite right. It is much nicer here than it would be in an empty house in Hampstead."
"That reminds me, my dear," Mrs. Danvers said. "Sit down here beside me, and let us have a nice cosy chat about your future. What are you going to do when you leave me at the end of the holidays? Are you going back to the school?"
"Yes—yes; I—think so," said Margaret, beginning to stammer and get red as she invariably did when Hampstead was mentioned. "At least, I—I don't know."
"Well, I may be mistaken of course—thank you, my dear, if you will just reach me my knitting, I can always talk so much better when I am knitting. Well, as I was going to say, I have an idea that you would be much happier teaching in a family than in a school. And I do wonder why I cannot persuade you to let me write to my daughter, Mrs. Lascelles, about you. I believe when she hears how much the children like you she would be only too pleased to take you out to Los Angelos for a few years. She would give you £50 a year—and your travelling expenses, of course. It is a chance, I assure you, that many girls in your place would jump at, for it is not, my dear, as if you were very highly certificated, you know. She will have a lovely house out there, for her husband is a very rich man, and they will treat you with every kindness and consideration. Now may I write to her and say that you would like to go?"
Several times already in the course of the past few weeks had Mrs. Danvers broached this subject to Margaret, but the latter had always hitherto been able to avoid giving her a direct answer as to why she was not willing to take the post. But what a thousand pities it was, Margaret thought, that Eleanor could not accept it. Once the wild idea had occurred to Margaret that she ought to accept it in Eleanor's name, and manage somehow to change places with her at the very last moment—on board the ship, even, perhaps; but fortunately she had seen the utter folly of that notion before it had taken firm route in her mind. She did not even know if Eleanor would have cared to go to Los Angelos had the chance been offered to her, for though she had seen Eleanor twice since the day on which she had first gone to Windy Gap, she had not been able to broach the subject to her. For on both occasions Eleanor had been so full of her own news, and their meetings had been of necessity so brief, that by the time Eleanor had poured out all she wanted to say the moment had come for them to part.
Margaret felt very much older than the girl who had left her grandfather's house three weeks ago. A great deal of experience had been pressed into those three weeks, and she had learned many things. Among them she had learned what perhaps at the time she had scarcely believed that there was, as Eleanor had said bitterly, a good deal of difference in their respective positions, and that an escapade which could not be visited very seriously on one might affect the other rather disastrously. Margaret knew now that Mrs. Danvers, good-natured as she was, would certainly have refused to take Eleanor in her place if she, Margaret, had carried out her intention of confessing everything. But in spite of that knowledge she still clung to the hope that the post at Los Angelos, which was being so warmly pressed upon the false Eleanor Carson, might eventually be offered to the real one! And so, if only for the sake of keeping the place open to Eleanor, she felt that she could not refuse it outright. What Eleanor meant to do when the holidays were over and they had to take their own names again, Margaret did not know. As far as she could judge from their brief, stolen interviews at Windy Gap, Eleanor continued to be radiantly happy there and to be earning golden opinions from Madame Martelli, and to be absolutely untroubled by any thoughts beyond the immediate present. The fact that she could not be Margaret Anstruther for ever never seemed as much as to enter her head. She gave no thought to the future at all. And of course, Margaret reflected, if she expected to be a celebrated Prima Donna by the end of the summer holidays, that was all right, but if not, did she intend to stay on at Windy Gap indefinitely and send her, the real Margaret, back to the school in her place? If such a thing were possible, Margaret felt sure that Eleanor would despatch her there with the utmost cheerfulness, and consequently Margaret was deeply thankful that such a course was not feasible, for Eleanor could hardly hope to pass another girl off as herself in a school where she had lived for the last seven or eight years. What, then, did Eleanor mean to do?
"My dear," said Mrs. Danvers reproachfully, breaking in upon Margaret's perplexed musings, "you are not listening to a word that I am saying, and what I want to have from you is a plain answer to the question why you refuse to go to Los Angelos."
"I—I could not leave England," Margaret answered. "I—I should not be allowed to."
"But, my dear, I understood from Miss McDonald that both your parents were dead and that you are absolutely alone in the world. Who, then, has authority over you? Unless," she added, a sudden look of enlightenment coming to her face, "you are engaged to be married. Is that it?"
"Oh, no," said Margaret, "I am not engaged to any one. It is no one of that sort at all."
"Then there is some one whom you wish to consult first. Now, who is it?"
By that time Margaret's confusion would have attracted the attention of any one a degree more observant than Mrs. Danvers, but she saw nothing suspicious in it; she was only bent on persuading Margaret to change her mind. As she said, it seemed such a pity for Miss Carson to stand so obstinately in her own light, for on the face of it a pleasant post and £50 a year was better than £20 in a second-rate school.
"There is no one who I would have to consult exactly," said Margaret, seeking vainly for a way of escape out of the tight corner into which she had blundered, "only—only I could not go."
"But, my dear," repeated Mrs. Danvers, "I have it in your own words; you said just now that you would not be allowed to leave England."
"No; yes, I mean," said Margaret, whose confusion was increasing so rapidly that by that time she had very little idea what she was saying. "I—I am sure I should be prevented. By the end of the holidays you—you may not like me any longer, and not wish me to go."
"Now what a very strange idea for you to take into your head," said Mrs. Danvers placidly. "Isn't that a strange idea Miss Carson has taken into her head, Hilary—that by the end of the summer holidays we may not like her any more?"
For just as Margaret had entered the room unperceived by Maud a few minutes back, so Hilary had now come in unheard by Margaret, and had been standing where Maud had stood—half in and half out of the window.
"Very strange," said Hilary, sending a swift glance at Margaret's averted face; "was it meant as a prophecy?"
Margaret was saved the necessity of an answer, for at that moment Edward, who was knocking the balls about on the croquet lawn, shouted to her to come and have a game; and thankfully enough Margaret fled through the open window.
"Her manners are rather casual to you, aren't they, mother?" said Hilary, flinging herself down in the easiest chair in the room, and taking up the local paper, which had been brought in by Martin a few minutes before.
"Oh, my dear, I don't mind," said Mrs. Danvers; "I am really getting quite fond of her. She left in a hurry that way just now, I expect, because she didn't like your little sneering speech at her. You know you have rather a sharp, unkind way with you sometimes, Hilary. Why don't you get on better with her?"
"Because I don't like her," Hilary said curtly.
"But, my dear, why not?"
"Because I don't. I heard you persuading her to go to Los Angelos just now," she added. "Did she say she would go?"
"No; I can't get her to say she would like to go, nor yet to say she won't go," said Mrs. Danvers. "Now I should have thought it was a chance she would have jumped at. But no; girls are so queer and independent nowadays, there is no accounting for them."
"It is very ungrateful of her when you have been good enough to bother about it," said Hilary, who, though she was delighted to hear that so far the post in her sister's household was unfilled, for she cherished dreams of going out to California with Mrs. Lascelles herself, would not let slip the opportunity of running Margaret down to any one who would listen. "Did she say why she wouldn't go?"
"Well, she did and she didn't," returned Mrs. Danvers, actually laying down her knitting for a moment as a recollection of the embarrassment Margaret had shown returned to her. "As far as I can gather, it is because she would not be allowed to do so by somebody or other, but who that somebody was she did not clearly explain to me."
By a few dexterous questions Hilary got her mother to repeat the gist of the conversation that had just taken place between herself and the holiday governess, and when she had finished there was a queer little gleam in Hilary's eyes that Margaret would not have liked to have seen.
"She would not be allowed to go, and when asked why not, had said that she would be prevented." Hilary turned these phrases over in her mind, and as soon as she could do so unperceived, wrote them down in a little note-book that she carried in her pocket.
For though she had now given up the practice she had originally started of plying Margaret with embarrassing questions, and letting it be plainly seen that none of the embarrassment Margaret showed at them was lost upon her, the watch she kept on her every look and action, though secret, was none the less vigilant. Perhaps even more so than it had been at the beginning of Margaret's stay, for Hilary was so fascinated by her new occupation of amateur detective that almost every word Margaret uttered, even down to a request that the salt might be passed to her at table, was entered in that little note-book. She blamed herself bitterly, she told Joan, for having undoubtedly put Margaret on her guard to start with; it was a false step, she said with a frown, that it might take her weeks and months to retrieve. "But she will be gone by that time," said Joan, "so it won't be much use retrieving it then."
Hilary retorted that she had been speaking in a general sense, and then changed the subject quickly lest Joan should discover how little sense of any sort the answer contained.
Undoubtedly the relief that Margaret experienced when Hilary ceased to cross-examine her at meal-times had much to do with her ceasing to dislike her life at The Cedars as vehemently as she had done at first, and so cautious was Hilary not to let Margaret suspect the close observation under which she still kept her, that Margaret had almost come to believe that she must have been mistaken in ever supposing that Hilary knew she had something to hide.
Could Margaret have had a glimpse at the pages of that note-book, however, she would have been quickly undeceived on that point. One entry alone, which had been made only a few days before, would have filled her with dismay. It occupied several pages and was headed, "The Clue of the Handkerchief."
The incident to which this sensational headline referred had taken place the previous Sunday afternoon, when most of the members of the family had been sitting in deck-chairs, or lying on rugs, under the shade of the big cedars on the lawn which gave the house its name. Some of the party were reading, others were frankly sleeping, when the quiet that reigned had been disturbed by Nancy, who came running over the grass waving a handkerchief over her head. "Who's the owner of this pretty thing, this pretty thing, this pretty thing?" she sang, to the tune of "Here we go round the mulberry bush." Geoffrey, who had been sound asleep, woke, and groaned aloud.
"Oh, go away, Nancy," he said; "can't you see that we are all reading?"
"I can't say I can," she retorted, glancing laughingly at his book, which lay face downwards on the grass beside him. "And I want to discover the owner of this handkerchief with the initials 'M. A.' on it."
"I am," said Margaret, as, without pausing to reflect, she stretched out her hand for it.
"Oh, Miss Carson, Miss Carson," said Nancy, dangling her prize in the air before dropping it on to Margaret's lap; "whose handkerchief have you been stealing? 'M. A.' are not your initials."
Too late Margaret realised her mistake, and as she had done on the day when she had failed to answer to her assumed name, she sent a quick, apprehensive glance round the circle of faces to see if any one had noticed her error. It appeared no one had, not even Hilary, on whose face Margaret's uneasy glance rested last and longest. But Hilary's eyes were fixed steadily on the pages of her book, and with a sigh of relief Margaret slipped the handkerchief into her pocket. Little did she think that when a quarter of an hour later Hilary rose and strolled slowly away, it was to seek a retired corner, and under that startling headline to make an extensive entry in the note-book.
But though it gave Hilary sincere satisfaction to be able to note that Miss Carson laid claim to a handkerchief that was obviously not hers, she was not able to deduce much from the discovery. However, she felt convinced that she was laying the train to find out a great deal later on, and as soon as she had collected a sufficient number of suspicious facts, they would surely explain themselves.
When, as it often did, Margaret's conscience grappled very strenuously with her, and told her that however much she might try to gloss over the truth, she was behaving very badly to three people—to her grandfather, to Mrs. Murray, and to Mrs. Danvers—poor Margaret would urge in her own extenuation that though she had entered into the scheme entirely for her own amusement she was now carrying it on solely to please Eleanor, and that, wrong as it was, no doubt, to go on with it, it would have been both cowardly and unkind of her to have thrown it up and by so doing deprive Eleanor not only of the singing lessons by which she set such store, and for which alone she had consented to the exchange, but a home for the summer holidays.
Those lines sprang unawares to Margaret's mind one day when she was rather sadly reviewing the position in which she had placed herself, and they appeared to her to fit the situation so exactly that they were frequently in her thoughts, and Hilary, to her intense gratification, heard her murmur them to herself one day when she thought herself alone. The quotation was one copied into the note book under the heading, "A Guilty Conscience Speaks."
"Is there anything interesting in the Gazette?" asked Mrs. Danvers, as Hilary idly opened the sheets of the local paper and spread them out on her knee.
Hilary happened to be in one of her most irritable humours that morning; even the faithful Joan found no pleasure in her society and had gone off to bathe with Nancy and Maud. She said it was the heat that made her feel slack and tired, and her mother said anxiously that she was afraid she did too much, whereat Hilary laughed sardonically, for no one knew better than she that she did nothing at all from morning to night. Why, even Nancy, who at least ate chocolates whenever she could get them, and read novels assiduously all day long and in bed too, might with justice be said to lead a busier life than she did. But, though Hilary often felt vaguely dissatisfied at the way in which she dawdled through the days, she had not strength of mind to bestir herself to pass them otherwise. After all, what was there for her to do? she asked herself irritably. She was supposed to have finished her education, and though she was dimly aware that she was shamefully ignorant, there seemed no especial object in her getting out her lesson-books and poring over them by herself.
But it was not the thought of her neglected opportunities that was making her so peevish this morning. She was cross because she could make nothing out of the number of suspicious facts that she had collected about Margaret. Of what use was it to have a note-book crammed full of well-grounded evidence that Miss Carson was an impostor of some sort if she could not gather from all the mass of material she had collected in what way she was imposing on them. It was enough, she thought, to make any one cross. And unless she could discover something definite against Miss Carson, Joanna would take her out to Los Angelos with her. But that, Hilary told herself with a little spasm of inward anger, should never come to pass.
"Hullo, Hilary! got the Gazette?" said Jack who, followed by Noel, and indeed the two boys were never very far apart, strolled through the window at that moment. "After you with it, I say."
"I have only just begun it myself," said Hilary, coolly tightening her hold upon it, "so I am afraid you will have to wait."
"Well, it didn't look to us from the garden as though you were reading it at all," grumbled Jack, "so you might just as well hand it over to us. We want to take it into the garden and see if there is anything in it about——"
"About the cricket at the Park," put in Noel quickly.
"Well, you needn't have snapped me up so quickly," grumbled Jack to his brother, but in so low a tone that neither Mrs. Danvers nor Hilary heard what he said.
"Well, if there is anything about the cricket I haven't come to it yet," said Hilary, beginning to enjoy the possession of the paper now that it was desired by some one else. "There is a lot about a big fancy fair that Sir Richard and Lady Strangways are going to have at Wrexley, and about the Regatta, and the dividends that the pier expects to get this half-year from the roller skating, and the new play at the theatre, and the usual lists of people staying at the hotels and boarding-houses. Who on earth ever reads them through, I wonder? But oh, I say!" she exclaimed suddenly, as turning over a page her eyes lighted on a column, half of which was taken up with big headlines that occupied the middle of the sheet. "I say, what do you think! There has been another burglary. That makes the third within the last three weeks. Colonel Baker's house was broken into last night, and all his silver plate was stolen, beside a most valuable old bronze Etruscan vase, two cases of family miniatures, and a collection of gold and silver coins. It——"
She was interrupted by a startled exclamation from Jack. "You don't mean to say that that is in the paper already!" he ejaculated.
"Why, did you know about it before, then?" said Hilary, eyeing her two brothers in surprise. "When did you hear about it? Have you seen Tommy this morning?"
"No, we have not seen Tommy to-day, and how could we have heard about it?" said Noel promptly. "What Jack meant to say was, has there really been another burglary already?"
Seabourne had certainly been unfortunate in the matter of burglaries of late. There had been three within as many weeks. One had taken place at Walker's, the principal jewellers in the High Street; another at the Grand Hotel, where a popular London dancer, Cora Anatolia by name, had been robbed of all her jewellery; and now this one of which Hilary had just read, when Colonel Baker's house, Chesham Lodge, had been broken into. And in each case the thieves had got clear away.
Naturally enough the police considered that all these burglaries had been perpetrated by the same gang; but in that they were wrong, for Master Tommy Baker, aided by his two chums, Noel and Jack Danvers, had committed the burglary at Colonel Baker's house the preceding evening as a practical joke.
It was perhaps one of the most unpremeditated burglaries that had ever taken place. He and the two young Danvers had spent the previous evening at the theatre, and as their road home lay in the same direction the two latter had accompanied Tommy as far as his gate. There Jack had remembered that Tommy had promised to lend him a book, and the two boys walked up the short drive with him intending to wait at the door while Tommy went in to get the book. As they turned the corner of the drive the light from the open study window streamed out on to the gravel, and they caught sight of Colonel Baker reclining sound asleep in an armchair. The hall door was likewise wide open.
"I say," Jack had exclaimed, "your house would be an easy one to burgle, wouldn't it? Half a dozen burglars could sneak right in under your father's very nose and go off with anything they fancied."
"Well, let's burgle it!" Tommy exclaimed light-heartedly. "It would be a ripping good joke. Fancy father's face in the morning." And thereupon Jack and Noel entering gleefully into the scheme, the three boys had crept silently into the house, gone as silently under Tommy's guidance from room to room, snatching up as they went the most valuable things on which they could lay hands.
It really was all done literally on the spur of the moment, and scarcely five minutes after the mad idea had entered Tommy's head the three boys stood in a dark corner of the drive with their booty, consisting of table silver, some valuable miniatures, and a collection of gold coins, securely tied up in a gaudy gold-embroidered Indian tablecloth that Tommy had taken from the drawing-room. The Colonel still slept peacefully.
"Now to hide it," said Tommy, "we'll bury it in a corner of your garden." Shaking with laughter, and wildly elated at the success of their mad prank, they very nearly ran, as they were leaving Chesham Lodge, straight into the arms of a policeman, who, with slow and solemn tread, was pacing down the road. That narrow shave calmed them somewhat, and probably there was not one of them who did not feel at that moment that they were actual burglars. At any rate, their progress from Chesham Lodge was attended with the utmost caution and with a show of mystery that must infallibly have aroused deep suspicion had they met any one.
"Why go to the fag of burying the swag?" said Tommy once they were safe within the shelter of The Cedars gates. "Let's take it to one of your bedrooms. Besides," he added; as if this were quite an afterthought, as indeed it was, "I don't want to spoil the things, and burying them might damage the miniatures. Let's shove them into a drawer in your room. Better go on first, Jack, and see if the coast is clear."
It was then about a quarter past ten, and most of the Danvers family were still in the billiard-room. Mrs. Danvers and Margaret, however, were in the drawing-room, and Edward had just gone up to bed.
When Jack came back with his report another short consultation was held. Edward's having gone up to bed made it impossible to hide their booty in any of the boys' bedrooms.
"What about your spare bedroom?" said Tommy; "you've got a biggish one, I know."
"Miss Carson is sleeping there," said Jack. "But I tell you what, she's not using the dressing-room. I know, because the girls keep some of their swaggerest dresses and things there. And there are heaps of empty drawers. So let's shove this thing into one of them."
Having reached the dressing-room unobserved, and closed the door and turned on the light, they looked round for a safe hiding-place. And that was not easily found. The drawers, far from being empty, were full either of blouses laid away in tissue paper, or of furs smothered in camphor.
The hanging wardrobe, too, was full of dresses, and the drawer beneath of hats.
"Oh, bother!" said Tommy crossly, "what an endless amount of room girls seem to want for their things!" Then suddenly his expression changed and he dived under the bed and dragged out a small trunk.
"The very thing. What luck! It's quite empty, and evidently hasn't been used for ages, the lid is all covered with dust. Probably no one even knows it is here. Shove in the bundle. Shall I lock it? Yes, I think I will. Then if any prying housemaid comes along and wants to look inside she won't be able to."
He slipped the key into his pocket, and the three boys left the room.
But mad as this practical joke was, the idea to which it had given rise in Hilary's mind was even more outrageous. For she had taken it into her head that Margaret was connected with the burglaries; and that when she was still far from guessing that the proceeds of one of them were actually locked up in her trunk. Hilary's suspicions were founded upon nothing more tangible than the fact that Margaret's cheeks were unusually pink that morning when the burglaries were being discussed. And she forgot that Margaret had just come in from playing croquet in the sun without a hat.
For some days Tommy, and in a lesser degree Noel and Jack, enjoyed themselves hugely. Colonel Baker was not the man to sit down tamely under his loss, and he stormed at the police for not restoring his property, interviewed the editors of the local papers, offered rewards for the apprehension of the thieves, and generally made a great stir in the matter. Presently Noel and Jack began to fear the consequences of their rash act, and they urged Tommy to smuggle his father's property out of their house and into his own. But Tommy turned a deaf ear to them, would not give up the key, and said they must keep up the joke a little longer. Then, just as Noel and Jack were about to declare that they had had enough of it, Tommy received an unexpected invitation to Scotland, and in the hurry of his departure went off with the key in his possession. So, greatly to their annoyance, the Danvers boys found themselves compelled to leave the things where they were.
In spite of the liking that both Edward and Nancy had come to show for her society, Margaret often felt very lonely at The Cedars, far more lonely than she would have believed it would be possible for her to be in a big household of lively boys and girls. Edward was a boy of many occupations and had much to do besides playing croquet with her, and Hilary often claimed Nancy's companionship even when she did not particularly wish for it just for the spiteful pleasure of depriving Margaret of it. So that Margaret was thrown very much on her own resources—so much so, indeed, that she sometimes wondered with a touch of wistfulness if she was any gayer in the midst of this merry, chattering crowd of young people than she had been in the silent old house that she had left so gladly one short month ago.
But, at any rate, her health had improved in a marked degree since she had come to Seabourne. That was, no doubt, due to the fact that, encouraged to do so by Mrs. Danvers, Margaret spent much of her time out of doors. And as she had discovered that the afternoon was the best time to visit Eleanor, Margaret generally started for Windy Gap directly after lunch, and the pure, breezy air of the downs acted as an excellent tonic.
And Eleanor, now that she knew that Margaret had no intention of ousting her from her quarters at Rose Cottage, always welcomed her warmly, and many were the long conversations that the two girls enjoyed in the little arbour in the corner of the kitchen garden that had witnessed their first momentous interview.
Margaret could reach Windy Gap now in a little under an hour, for she had found out many short cuts across the grass, by means of which she avoided the long, twisting high-road that ran by the edge of the cliffs altogether. And by leaving the steep lane that led from the little village in the hollow up to Rose Cottage before it brought her to the front gate she could skirt below the wall that enclosed the domain and enter the kitchen garden by a side gate without coming in sight of the windows at all. It was Eleanor who had shown her this mode of entry and who had also told her that the early hours of the afternoon between two and four were the ones on which Margaret could most surely count on finding her alone, for Mrs. Murray always took a nap after lunch and was not visible again until tea-time. If Margaret found her days at The Cedars empty and somewhat long, Eleanor up at Rose Cottage had nothing at all to complain of in that respect.
"My dear Margaret," she said one day, "you must have led a strenuous life from your youth up if, even when you are supposed to be taking things easy, you have had such a course of study, as I am compelled to pursue in your place, mapped out for you. If your grandfather had wished you to become a naturalised Italian he couldn't have been keener on your acquiring a thorough knowledge of the language. He never writes to me, but I know he wrote a long letter to Mrs. Murray the other day hoping that I was getting on with my studies and that neither she nor Madame Martelli permitted me to mope and dream my time away in the profitless, silly way that had of late become habitual to me, and which was admirably adapted, if the habit were encouraged, to weaken my brain permanently."
Margaret coloured faintly as Eleanor quoted that passage from Mr. Anstruther's letter. For a moment she almost imagined that she could hear her grandfather's caustic voice speaking to her, and though what he had said was not particularly flattering, she knew that it contained a certain amount of truth.
"Mrs. Murray wrote back and told him," Eleanor went on, "that I was making capital progress both with my singing and with the language, and that Madame Martelli was exceedingly pleased with me. She also said that I showed no disposition at all to mope, but was as busy and as brisk as a bee from morning to night. And so I am," said Eleanor with a laugh. "Madame Martelli sees to that. We have breakfast here every morning at eight, and by a quarter to nine I am down at Milan Cottage, which is the name of Madame's house, and I study and sing with her until half-past twelve, when I come home. We lunch at one, have tea at four, and directly after tea I go down to Milan Cottage again and am taken for a little walk by Madame. At half-past seven Mrs. Murray and I dine, and at half-past nine we go to bed. And that has been my daily life for the last three weeks."
But there was no need to ask Eleanor if she was satisfied with it. Every line of her face expressed radiant happiness, and though she spoke jestingly of the way in which her nose was kept to the grindstone, Margaret knew that she was really revelling in this chance of getting the instruction in Italian that she wanted. And as for the singing lessons, their value, she declared vehemently, was beyond price to her. Any time during the last two years she would, she said, have gladly lived in a hovel, fared on bread and water, and gone barefoot and in rags for the sake of them.
"Sometimes I wake up in the night and think I am only dreaming a beautiful dream," she said, "and that when I really am awake I shall find myself back in Hampstead in the ugly little dingy room that I shared with two little girls. And then I have to light my candle and look round me and assure myself that I really am in the pretty white bedroom that Mrs. Murray has given to me here, and that my good fortune is a reality and not a dream."
"Has your life been a very unhappy one?" Margaret asked her gravely one day.
"I have often been very unhappy," Eleanor answered thoughtfully; "but that, of course, is different to having had an unhappy life. Of course, my mother's and my father's death was a great grief to me, and when the sense of the awful loss their death was to me grew less the resentment I felt at my changed circumstances made me awfully bitter and unhappy for a time. For I can tell you it was a violent change. Up to the age of thirteen I lived as if I were going to be rich all my life and was the spoilt darling of my parents and of every one round me. After that I was a pupil teacher, taken in literally out of charity, in a second-rate suburban school. I am sure for a time I must have behaved too hatefully for words, and if Miss McDonald had sent me to the workhouse it would have served me right. But she knew that she was the only friend I had, and was awfully good to me. If I had only been older when the crash came I daresay I should have been better provided with friends; but at that age I wanted no friends except my own horses and dogs, and my father and mother were always too wrapped up in each other to care to make friends. So that was really why at their death I was left so utterly stranded, and had Miss McDonald not come forward to my rescue I would have gone, I suppose, to a charity school. She was, as I say, awfully good to me. You see, she understood, and that made all the difference. She had gone through much the same sudden change of fortune herself, for she had never been brought up to work for her living either. Somehow she did not say much, but she made me see the utter uselessness of repining and taught me how much braver it was to accept things as they are and to make the best of them. And so I set my teeth and made the best of them, or rather tried to make the best of them, which isn't quite the same thing, but still the best I could do. And I was getting sort of resigned to my lot when the idea came to me that I had a voice, and I went to see Signor Vanucci. An unknown girl and a famous man like that! The utter cheek of it, Margaret! But I have told you all about it and the hopes he raised, which were only to be dashed to the ground by his unexpected death. It took me months and months to get over it; in fact, in the sense of the word I never did get over it; even the gradual down-fall of the school and the awful struggle that Miss McDonald was going through never seemed to me as real as my own disappointment. I sometimes think, Margaret, that I must be horribly selfish and heartless. And then through you, Margaret, this second chance came, and though I held back at first, I seized it gladly and mean to hold it as long as I can, although I know," she added, "how very atrociously I am behaving to you and Mrs. Murray."
"Oh!" said Margaret in surprise, for this was the very first time Eleanor had admitted as much.
"Of course, I always knew I was doing wrong," Eleanor said, "but I tried to hush my conscience up. I can't hush it up any longer, but," she added with much vigour, "it needn't think that I am going to pay any attention to what it says, for I am not."
Margaret could scarcely help smiling at the defiant note in Eleanor's voice. The latter turned suddenly and laid her hand on Margaret's knee.
"Don't judge me too hardly, Margaret," she said. "I know you think me selfish and callous, and utterly without any decent feelings at all to be deliberately keeping you out of your own name, and to be taking everything that ought by rights to belong to you. But you don't know what this chance means to me. You can't even dimly conceive it. It is just the turning-point of my life.
"There, Margaret, doesn't that fit our case exactly? Shallows and miseries are Hampstead and the school, and the full sea is the chance you are giving me."
"You see, Margaret," she went on earnestly, "a voice is not quite like any other gift. If you don't train it when you are young you might as well not train it at all. It is too late when you are old, and then your gift is thrown away—wasted. Even as it is Madame Martelli says that I have no time to lose. She wants me to go to Milan next spring."
"To Milan!" Margaret exclaimed.
"Or to Paris," Eleanor went on half absently.
"To Paris!" Margaret echoed again.
"Don't remind me that I can't go!" Eleanor exclaimed fiercely, springing to her feet and beginning to pace up and down the path in front of the arbour, "for, of course, I know it without being told. I won't look forward, I won't, I won't! I will go on living in the present which is giving me all I want. The future is too gloomy and uncertain to be thought of yet, and so, hey presto!" and her brow cleared as if by magic, "I refuse to think of it."
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 è 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——