"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 pa.s.sionate 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 circ.u.mstances, 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-b.u.t.ter 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 m.u.f.fled 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."