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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Margaret nodded. She remembered now.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Then Margaret found her voice.

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

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

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

Eleanor gave a short and very mirthless laugh.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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