She opened the door of her sitting-room, and looked in. Then she turned to the young man who stood gravely in the background, as if awaiting her orders.

"Will you come in?" she said. But when she thought he was about to speak, she made a quick sign with her hand.

please."

"Not yet,

The cloth was laid, but some books and papers had been pushed to one end of the table. Judith went to them, and lifted them carefully, as if she were looking for something. Then she went to the little sidetable. Then to the chimney-piece, still seeking, while Thorne stood by the window, silently waiting.

She was

The search was evidently unavailing, and Judith rang the bell. During the pause which ensued, she rested her elbow on the back of Bertie's easy-chair, and covered her eyes with her hand. shaking from head to foot, but, when the door opened, she stood up tried to speak in her usual voice.

and

"Are there any letters by the second post for me, Emma?" The little maid looked wonderingly at Mr. Thorne, and then at Miss Lisle. "No, ma'am. I always bring 'em up."

"I know you do, but I thought they might have been forgotten. Will you ask Miss Bryant if she is quite sure none came for me this morning?"

There was another silence while Emma went on her errand. She came back with Miss Bryant's compliments, and no letters had come for Miss Lisle.

"Thank you," said Judith. want dinner brought in."

"That will do. I will ring when I

When they were left alone, Percival stepped forward. “What is it?"

he said. "You will tell me now."

She answered with averted eyes.

"You know that our school

broke up yesterday? Emmeline Nash went away by the nine-o'clock train, but she has never gone home!"

"Has never gone home!" Percival repeated. "That is very strange. She must have met with some accident." There was no answer. "It may not be anything serious-surely you are distressing yourself too much."

Judith looked up into his face with questioning eyes.

"Or perhaps it is some school-girl freak," Thorne went on. "Naturally, Miss Crawford must be very anxious; but don't make up your mind to the worst till you know for certain."

Still that anxious questioning look, as if she would read his very soul. Percival was startled and perplexed, and his eyes made no response. The girl turned away with a faint cry of impatience and despair. "And I am his own sister!"

said.

Percival stood for a moment, thunderstruck. Then "Bertie!" he

"But you did not think of him till I spoke," she answered, passionately. "It was my doing-mine!"

"Where is Bertie?" Thorne asked the question with something of her fear in his eyes.

"I don't know. I had that yesterday morning."

He took a pencilled scrap of paper from her hand. Bertie had written,

"I find I cannot be back this afternoon, probably not till to-morrow. Don't expect me till you see me, and don't be anxious about me. All right.-Your H.L."

"How did you get this?" he asked, turning it uneasily in his fingers.

"A boy brought it from the station, not half an hour after he went."

Percival was silent. A sudden certainty had sprung up in his mind, and it made any attempt at reassuring her little better than a lie. Yet he felt as if his certainty were altogether unfounded. He could assign no reason for it. The truth was, that Bertie himself was the reason, and Percival knew him better than he had supposed.

"Mr. Thorne," said Judith, "don't you hate me for what I've said ? Surely you must. Miss Crawford doesn't dream that Bertie has anything to do with this. And you didn't, for I watched your eyes-you never would have thought of him but for me. It is I, his own sister, who have hinted it. He has nobody but me, and when his back is turned I accuse him of being so base, so cruel, so mercenary, that- She stopped and tried to steady her voice. Suddenly she turned and pointed to the door. "And if he came in there now, this minute-oh, Bertie, my Bertie, if you would!-if he stood there now, I should have slandered him without a shadow of proof. Oh, it is odious, horrible! The one in all the world who should have clung to him and believed in him, and I have thought this of him! Say it is horrible, unnaturalreproach me-leave me! Oh, my God! You can't."

And in truth Percival stood mute and grave, holding the shred of paper in his hand, and making no sign through all the questioning pauses in her words. But her last appeal roused him.

If you are the first one to hope and pray She suffered him to

"No," he said gently. "I can't reproach you. to think this, don't I know that you will be the when others give up." He took her hands in his. do what he would. "How should Miss Crawford think of him?" he said. 66 Pray God we may be mistaken, and if Bertie comes back, can we not keep silence for ever?"

66 I could not look him in the face."

"Tell me all," said Thorne. "Where did he say he was going? Tell me everything. If you are calm, and if we lose no time, we may unravel this mystery, and clear Bertie altogether before any harm is done. As you say, there is no shadow of proof. Miss Nash may have

gone away alone-school-girls have silly fancies. Or perhaps some accident on the line"

"No," said Judith.

"No? Are you sure? Sit down and tell me all."

She obeyed to the best of her ability. She told him what Bertie had said about the situation he hoped to obtain, and what little she knew about Emmeline's disappearance.

Percival listened, with a face which grew more anxious with every

word.

This is what had actually happened that morning at Standon Square. Judith was busy over Miss Crawford's accounts. She remembered so well the column of figures, and the doubtful hieroglyphic which might be an 8, but was quite as likely to be a 3. While she sat gazing at it, and weighing probabilities in her mind, the housemaid appeared, with an urgent request that she would go to Miss Crawford at once. Obeying the summons, she found the old lady looking at an unopened letter which lay on the table before her.

"My dear," said the little schoolmistress, "look at this." There was a tone of hurried anxiety in her voice, and she held it out with fingers that trembled a little.

It was directed in a gentleman's hand, neat and old-fashioned

Miss Emmeline Nash,

Care of Miss Crawford,

Montague House,

Standon Square,

Brenthill.

Judith glanced eagerly at the envelope. For a moment she had feared that it might be some folly of Bertie's addressed to one of the girls. But this was no writing of his, and she breathed again.

when

"To Emmeline," she said. "From some one who did not know broke you Did up. you want me to direct it to be forwarded?" "Forwarded-where? Do you know who wrote that letter?" By this time Miss Crawford's crisp ribbons were quivering like aspenleaves.

"No-who? Is there anything wrong about this correspondent of Emmeline's? I thought you would forward it to her at home. Dear Miss Crawford, what is the matter?"

"That is Mr. Nash's writing-Oh, Judith, what does it mean? She went away yesterday to his house, and he writes to her here!"

The girl was taken aback for a moment, but her swift common sense came to her aid. "It means that Mr. Nash has an untrustworthy servant, who has carried his master's letter in his pocket, and posted it a day too late, rather than own his carelessness. Some directions about Emmeline's journey-open it and see."

“Ah! possibly—I never thought of that," said Miss Crawford, feeling for her glasses. "But," her fears returning in a moment, "I ought to have heard from Emmeline."

"When? She would hardly write the night she got there. You were sure not to hear this morning, you know how she puts things off. The midday post will be in directly; perhaps you'll hear then. Open the letter now, and set your mind at rest."

The envelope was torn open. "Now, you'll see he wrote it on the 18th-Good heavens! It's dated yesterday!"

"My dear Emmeline,-Since Miss Crawford wishes you to remain two days longer for this lesson you talk of, I can have no possible objection; but I wish you could have let me know a little sooner. You very thoughtfully say you will not give me the trouble of writing if I grant your request. I suppose it never occurred to you that by the time your letter reached me every arrangement had been made for your arrival—a greater trouble, which might have been avoided if you had written earlier. Neither did you give me much choice in the matter.

"But I will not find fault just when you are coming home. I took you at your word when your letter arrived yesterday, and did not write. But to-day it has occurred to me that after all you might like a line, and that Miss Crawford would be glad to know that you will be met at the end of your journey."

Compliments to the schoolmistress followed, and the signature "Henry Nash."

The two women read this epistle with intense anxiety. But while Miss Crawford was painfully deciphering it, and had only realised the terrible fact that Emmeline was lost, the girl's quicker brain had snatched its meaning at a glance. She saw the cunning scheme to secure two days of unsuspected liberty. Who had planned this? Who had so cleverly dissuaded Mr. Nash from writing? And what had the brainless, sentimental school-girl done with the time?

"Where is she?" cried Miss Crawford, clinging feebly to Judith. "Oh, has there been some accident?"

"No accident," said Judith. "Do you not see that it was planned beforehand? She never thought of staying till Friday."

"No, never. Oh, my dear, I don't seem able to understand. Don't you think perhaps my head will be clearer in a minute or two? Where can she be?"

The poor old lady looked vaguely about, as if Miss Nash might be playing hide and seek behind the furniture. Her face was veined and ghastly. She hardly comprehended the blow which was falling upon her, but she shivered hopelessly, and thought she should understand soon, and looked up at Judith with a mute appeal in her dim eyes.

"Where can she be?" The girl echoed Miss Crawford's words half to herself. "What ought we to do?"

"I can't think why she wrote and told them not to meet her on

Wednesday," said the old lady. "So timid as Emmeline always was, and she hated travelling alone. Oh, Judith! Has she run away with

some one?"

A cold hand seemed to clutch Judith's heart, and her face was like marble. Bertie! Oh, no-no—no ! Not her brother! This treachery could not be his work. Yet "Bertie" flashed before her eyes, as if the name were written in letters of flame on Mr. Nash's open note, on the wall, the floor, the ceiling. It swam in a fiery haze between Miss Craw ford and herself.

She stood with her hands tightly clasped, and her lips compressed. It seemed to her that if she relaxed the tension of her muscles for one moment, Bertie's name would force its way out in spite of her. And even in that first dismay she was conscious that she had no ground for her belief but an unreasoning instinct, and the mere fact that Bertie was away.

"Help me, Judith!" said Miss Crawford, pitifully. She trembled as she clung to the girl's shoulder. "I'm not so young as I used to be, you know. I don't feel as if I could stand it. Oh, if only your mamma were here."

Judith answered with a sob. Miss Crawford's confession of old age I went to her heart. So did that pathetic cry, which was half longing for her who had been so many years at rest, and half for Miss Crawford's own stronger and brighter self of bygone days. She put her arm round the schoolmistress, and held up the shaking, unsubstantial little figure.

"If Bertie has done this, he has killed her," said the girl to herself, even while she declared aloud, "I will help you, dear Miss Crawford. I will do all I can. Don't be so unhappy-it may be better than we fear." But the last words, instead of ringing clear and true, as consolation should, died faintly on her lips.

Something was done, however. Miss Crawford was put on the sofa, and had a glass of wine, while Judith sent a telegram in her name to Mr. Nash. But the poor old lady could not rest for a moment. She pulled herself up by the help of the back of the couch, and sitting there, with her ghastly face surmounted by a crushed and wobegone cap, she went over the same old questions, and doubts, and fears, again and again. Judith answered her as well as she could, and persuaded her to lie down once more. But in another moment she was up again.

"Judith-I want you! Come here! Come quite close!"
"Here I am, dear Miss Crawford. What is it?"

The old lady looked fixedly at the kneeling figure before her. "I've nobody but you, my dear," she said. "You are a little like your

mamma sometimes."

"Am I?" said Judith. "So much the better. Perhaps it will make feel as if I could help you."

you

"You are not like her to-day. Your eyes are so sad and strange."