Brett and the Professor up from the station. He saw Rosamund, and recognized her as the girl he had seen some hours before walking alone along the high-road. He went up to her and put his hand on her shoulder.

"Are you one of the young ladies who live here?"

"Yes," she replied, glancing at him in surprise, for so lost had she been in her own thoughts that she had positively hardly observed him when he swiftly pa.s.sed her in the early morning.

"Then I congratulate you upon your powers of early rising."

Rosamund colored. Lucy's eyes were fixed on her face.

"My dear Miss Lucy," said the doctor, "your friend, Miss"----

"My name is Rosamund Cunliffe," said Rosamund.

"Your friend Miss Cunliffe has put all the rest of you young ladies to shame. She was walking abroad this morning between four and five o'clock at some distance from here."

Lucy's eyes flashed fire. Rosamund found herself turning pale. The Professor looked at her. Suddenly Rosamund went up to the Professor and took his hand.

"I want to speak to you, and alone," she said.

"In a moment, my dear," he answered.

He then turned to the doctor.

"Mrs. Brett, my kind sister-in-law, has promised to take all my young people to her house in Dartford," he said. "She proposes that they should return with her immediately. Then the house will be quite quiet for the invalid, and there will be no danger of the disease spreading."

"If it does spread I shall be on the spot to grapple with it," said Dr.

Marshall.--"What an excellent plan, Mrs. Brett, and how exactly like you!--Now then, young ladies, the sooner you pack up the better. You needn't take a great many things; they can be sent to you afterwards.

The great thing is to get away. It may be in the air; it may be--we cannot tell what; but the sooner all of you young people are out of Sunnyside the safer it will be."

"It would not be fair," said the Professor, "to ask the Singletons to take any of them in. We did think of that at first. We know how particularly kind Mr. Singleton is. But there are his own children to be thought of; and as he is the rector of the parish he has also to consider his parishioners."

"I am the woman who has to act in this emergency," said Mrs. Brett; "and now the sooner we drop the subject of whys and wherefores the better.--Run upstairs, my dears, and get ready.--I will not even see my dear sister, Mrs. Merriman, for fear of infection; but you will know where to find me if you want my help."

"I don't think we shall need it," said the doctor. "Two excellent nurses are coming by the next train, and I shall leave full directions, and my a.s.sistant will come out to see the patient this evening.--Now, if you will kindly allow me to pa.s.s, young ladies, I will go and see the invalid, and I will not see any of you again afterwards. It is safer not."

There was a look on his face which startled and brought back some of the nervousness of most of the girls. But Mrs. Brett, or Aunt Susan, as Lucy called her, was all smiles and benediction.

"My dears," she said in her motherly way, "there is room enough and to spare in my house for every one of you--room enough and to spare. You shall have the heartiest welcome."

Here Mrs. Brett went up to Rosamund, and, rather to the surprise of the others, elected her for a resounding kiss on the cheek.

"My dear, a girl who can go out and take a walk at so early an hour in the morning is quite after my own heart."

"But, Aunt Susan," interrupted Lucy, "do you really approve of a girl who burns the candle at both ends? It so happens that I was obliged to invade Rosamund's room last night, and I heard her reciting poetry in two voices, and then I heard her throw her voice into a distant part of the room, so that you might almost imagine that she was a ventriloquist.

It was nearly eleven o'clock, and the doctor said he saw her walking along the high-road between four and five this morning. Don't you think it is too much for her strength?"

"Never mind, dear," said Mrs. Brett, who was as kind in heart as her face appeared. "I admire energy; but the energy of the young is sometimes misdirected. When dear Rosamund comes to stay with me I will show her one or two things.--You won't mind getting a wrinkle or two from an old woman, will you, Rose?"

"No," said Rosamund, who was absolutely torn in the midst of many conflicting emotions: her anxiety for her friend, her knowledge of what had happened the night before, her ever-increasing dislike to Lucy--and, in fact, the whole false position in which she found herself--all distressed her beyond measure.

Again she touched the Professor on the arm.

"I want to say something," she remarked, and she turned and faced the other girls.--"Before I decide to go with Mrs. Brett I must speak to Professor Merriman."

"But there is no time, my dear," said Mrs. Brett. "Our train leaves in three-quarters of an hour. Each girl will please pack a small bag, if she possesses such a useful commodity, and we must walk as fast as ever we can to the station, for my poor dear husband has no end of things for me to attend to to-day, and the moment we get to Dartford we shall have to bustle about, I can tell you. There'll be no time for whims and fancies, or even for lessons; for there is to be an enormous tea-fight, as I call it, for the young folk of the parish in the schoolhouse this afternoon, and games afterwards, and recitations; and if you, Rosamund, can recite as well as Lucy has described, why, you will be invaluable."

"But I can't recite. Lucy is mistaken," said Rosamund.--"Professor, may I speak to you?--Mrs. Brett, if you are in a hurry, I will follow you by a later train, if it is decided that I am to go to you."

Here the determined girl took the Professor by the arm, and leading him into the study, shut the door behind them, and turned and faced him.

"I have been exceedingly naughty. I have broken my word of honor."

Now, the Professor, who was always extremely dreamy, had nearly forgotten Rosamund's transgression of the previous Sunday. He did not speak at all for a minute, but looked at her in puzzled astonishment.

"You have broken your word of honor?" he said. "We are in great trouble.

I hope you are not now beginning to be taken up with whims and fancies.

If so, please transfer them to a more convenient season. I am hara.s.sed about my books, my--my dear wife, and that poor girl. By the way, she is your friend, too. I can quite understand that you are grieved on her account."

"I am terribly grieved. I do not wish to leave. I should like to stay and help to look after her."

"But that cannot be permitted. That would be an act of the greatest selfishness. What we require you to do is to leave the house before you are infected--you even more than the others, for you have been in the same room with her."

"I do not think I am infected. I cannot imagine how Jane caught diphtheria. I did see her bending down over a drain the other day. She had dropped her pencil and was trying to find it. I told her not to do it, and even dragged her away. I am sure I am all right, and I should not allow her to breathe on me, and I think I could help."

"It is generous of you, my dear, but it cannot possibly be permitted,"

said the Professor. "I will relate that little circ.u.mstance to my wife.

Not that it matters, after all, how we get our diseases; the thing is to cure them when we have acquired them. However, I will mention the circ.u.mstance to my dear wife."

"Please do. Now, I have something to confess. You heard what Lucy said: that I was reciting poetry, that I was using two voices, that I was a sort of ventriloquist. You heard what Dr. Marshall said: that he saw me on the high-road at a very early hour this morning. Now, I was not reciting last night; I was talking to another girl, and no less a girl than that one I had promised you to have no communication with for a whole week--Irene Ashleigh. Please hear me out before you speak. I did not ask her to come to me. She came on her own account. I did mean to keep my word of honor; but Irene, poor little girl! had taken a liking to me. I had managed, I don't know how, to touch something sympathetic in her heart, and she was hungering for me, and you had forbidden me to go to her. So last night, after I came to bed, she was in my room. She had got in by the window. Oh, don't look at me with those startled eyes!

I do not wish her to be blamed, and I was not to blame when I found her there, for I did mean to keep my word of honor. She begged of me to lock the door, but I refused; and I think I was almost inducing her to leave the house, and to go home, when Lucy burst into the room. Lucy came to fetch something for Mrs. Merriman--something that Jane wanted--and Irene was under the bed like a flash. It was she who made that noise that Lucy attributed to me. Then afterwards I felt reckless, and I did lock the door, and I did go out by the open window, and I spent the night in the summer-house with little Irene, and this morning I walked back with her to The Follies. Now you know what I am. You see I am not worth saving; and I want to tell you that if you will not have me here, then I will go to Lady Jane, and tell her the entire story, and ask her if I may stay with her--at least until the time of infection is over. That is what I wish to do; but I will not go in the dark. I have told you how naughty I have been, and you can punish me by expelling me from the school. But, please, quite understand that your daughter has provoked me a great deal, and that I did make an effort--at least at first--to keep my word of honor."

Rosamund's voice dropped. In truth, the emotions of the previous day, the night before, and this morning had been too many for her. She trembled, and finally, to the great astonishment of the Professor, burst into tears. Now, no one ever had higher principles than Professor Merriman, but no man ever had a greater horror of tears. He could not bear what Rosamund had told him; he could not understand how, under any provocation, a girl could act as Rosamund had done; and yet, at the same time, her tears so maddened him that he would have done anything to get rid of her.

"You bewilder me," he said. "Of course, you did wrong. Do you wish to go with Mrs. Brett? I will see you presently and speak to you."

"If you will not have me here, I will not go with Mrs. Brett. I will go to Lady Jane; for there is one person who wants me, although you will not believe it!"

"Then please yourself; but I grieve to tell you that after your recent conduct I cannot receive you again at the school."

Rosamund left the room with a proud step, but there was something in her heart which danced.

CHAPTER XI.

b.o.o.bY-TRAPS.