"I've spread it like very thin b.u.t.ter on very thick bread, to make the hundreds look like thousands. To carry off a big _coup_ like this, one must have _some_ ready money," broke in Joan, with a queer little smile at her own cleverness, and the thought of where it would land her if Marian's "conscientious scruples" refused to be put to sleep. "We _shall_ be in rather a sc.r.a.pe if you won't marry Sir Anthony--and you're made for each other, too. But never mind, we shall get out of it somehow. At worst, we can disappear."

"And leave everything unpaid, and let him and everybody know we are adventuresses!" exclaimed Marian, breaking into tears.

"Don't cry, dear; don't worry; and don't decide anything," said Joan.

"I have an idea."

She induced Marian to go to bed and nurse the violent headache which the battle between heart and conscience had brought on. When it was certain that Mrs. Fitzpatrick would not appear again that evening, she sent a little note by hand to Sir Anthony, as fortunately Torr Count was the next estate to Roseneath Park. "Do come over at once. It is very important that I should see you," wrote the decorous Mercy.

Sir Anthony Pendered was in the midst of dinner when the communication arrived, and to his sister's disgust he begged her to excuse him, as it was necessary to go out immediately on business.

"That adventuress has sent for you!" Ellen Pendered fiercely exclaimed.

"She has got you completely in her net. I don't believe those three are sisters. They don't look in the least alike, and it is all very well to say an ignorant nurse spoiled the child's accent. I have heard her talk more like a c.o.c.kney than a Californian. I tell you there is something wrong, very wrong, about them all."

"I advise you not to tell any one else, then," answered Anthony Pendered furiously--"that is, unless you wish to break off for ever with me.

This afternoon I asked the 'adventuress,' as you dare to call her, to marry me, and she refused. I had to plead before she would even promise to think it over." With this he left his sister also to "think it over," and decide that, between two evils, it might be wise to choose the less.

Marian's lover could not guess why Marian's younger sister had sent for him, and his anxiety increased when he saw the gravity of the girl's face.

"Is Mar--is Mrs. Fitzpatrick ill?" he stammered.

"A little, because she is unhappy; but you can make her well again--if you choose," replied Joan inscrutably.

"Of course I choose!" he almost indignantly protested.

"Wait," said she, "and listen to what I have to say. Poor Marian is the victim of her own goodness and sweet nature; and because she swore to me that she would never tell the story of our past, she feels it would be wrong to marry you. I cannot let her suffer for Minnie and me, so I am now going to tell you, myself. But on this condition--if you do decide that you want her for your wife in spite of all, you will never once mention the subject to Marian. I will inform her that you know the truth and that she is not to speak of it to you. Is that a bargain?"

"Yes; but you needn't tell me the story unless you like. I'm sure _she_ is not to blame for anything," replied the man, who was now thoroughly in love with Marian, even to the point of wondering what he had ever seen in Mercy.

"Certainly it is not she; but as she thinks it is, it amounts to the same thing. The facts are these: Dear, good Marian took pity on Minnie and me in a London boarding-house, where we chanced to meet after her widowhood. She had decided to come here to live, because she longed for the country, but had not meant to take as grand a house as this, as she had just found out that her dead husband had spent most of her fortune.

I implored her to bring Minnie and me to her new home, and give me a good chance of getting into society by introducing us as her sisters.

She was rather a 'swell'--at least, she had married an 'Honourable,' and we were n.o.bodies. The poor darling finally consented to handicap herself with us. I had a little money, too, which had--er--come to me through a lucky investment, and I was so anxious to live at Roseneath Park that I made Marian (who is most unbusiness-like) believe that together we would have enough to take the place. I am supposed to be practical, and so the management of everything has been left to me. I have paid scarcely anything, except the servants' wages, so you see what I have brought my poor Marian down to. The only atonement I can make is to try and save her happiness by confessing my wrongdoing to you and begging that you will not visit it on her."

"I certainly will not do that," said Sir Anthony Pendered quickly. "As you say, her one fault has been a kindness of heart almost amounting to weakness, which, in my eyes, makes her more lovable than ever. As for the loss of her money, that matters nothing to me. I have more than I want, and----"

"You'll pay everything, without betraying me to Marian? Oh! I don't deserve it; but _do_ say you will do that, and I will relieve you of my presence near your _fiancee_ as soon as possible, as a reward. I know that, after what I have told you, it would be an embarra.s.sment to you to see me with Marian, because as you are _very_ chivalrous, you could not let people know I was not really her sister. I will disappear, and every one can think I have been suddenly called out to my Californian lover to be married."

"Doesn't he exist?" questioned Sir Anthony, looking at her "engaged"

finger and thinking of the matrimonial schemes she had just confessed.

"Not in California. But as I haven't been a success here, I may decide to be true to the person who gave me this ring." (She had bought it herself.) "Now that I've promised to go out of Marian's life for ever, you'll guard her happiness by seeing that everything is straightened here--financially?"

"I shall be only too delighted, if you will tell me how to manage it without my name appearing in the matter."

"We--ll, if you'd trust the money to me, I'd use it honestly to pay our debts, and give you all the receipts."

"So it shall be."

"You're a--a brick, Sir Anthony. The only difficulty left then is about poor little Minnie, of whom Marian is really very fond. People might gossip if Marian let her youngest sister go back to California with me; for as we are supposed to be so nearly related, surely it would be better to save a scandal and let--well, let sleeping sisters lie?"

"If Marian is truly fond of Minnie, there will be plenty of room for the child at Torr Court, and she will be welcome to stay there, as far as I am concerned. I must say, Miss--er--Milton, that I think the child will be better off under our guardianship than in the care of her real sister."

"You _are_ good, and I quite agree with you," responded Joan meekly, far from resenting his look of stern reproach. "When you've trusted me with that money to pay things, and I hand you the receipts, I'll hand you also a written undertaking never to trouble you or--Lady Pendered. You would like me to do that, wouldn't you?"

"I--er--perhaps something of the kind might be advisable," murmured Sir Anthony.

When he had gone, the girl chuckled and clapped her hands. Then she ran to a looking-gla.s.s. "You're not exactly stupid, my dear," she apostrophised her saintly reflection. "You've provided splendidly for Marian and you've saved her sensitive conscience. _Her_ slate is clean.

As for Minnie, she will be all right until the time comes, if it ever does, that you can do better for her. As for yourself--well, you can leave Marian a couple of hundred for pocket-money, and still get out of this with something on which to start again. You've finished with Mercy Milton, thank goodness! and--it _will_ be a relief to do your hair another way."

Two days later, Joan Carthew had turned her back upon Toragel, and Mrs.

Fitzpatrick's engagement to Sir Anthony Pendered was announced.

CHAPTER VII--The Woman Who Knew

Joan went straight from Cornwall to London and the Bloomsbury boarding-house in which some of her curiously earned money was invested.

All was to begin over again now; but to the girl this idea brought inspiration rather than discouragement, for the world was still her oyster, if she could open it, and experience had already taught her some dexterity in the use of the knife. At this house in Woburn Place she had the right to live without paying, while she "looked round," and Miss Witt, who owed her present position to Joan, was only too delighted to welcome her benefactress.

The place was doing well, and the corner of difficulty had been turned; this was the news the manager-housekeeper had to give Joan. Every room but one was full, and so far the boarders seemed to be "good pay," with perhaps a single exception.

"There's only the little top floor back that's empty," cheerfully went on Miss Witt. "Of course, I will take that and give you mine."

"You'll do nothing of the sort, my dear woman," said Joan. "I like running up and down stairs. It does me good. Besides, I'd rather be at the back. There's a tree, or something that once tried hard to be a tree, to look at, as I know well, for the room used to be mine; so there's no use talking any more about that matter--it's settled. You stay where you are, and I will rise, like cream, to the top. Now tell me about this doubtful person you are afraid won't pay. Is it a man or a woman?"

"A woman," replied Miss Witt, "and one of the strangest beings I ever saw. It is a great comfort to me that you are here, miss, for you can decide what is to be done about her. She hasn't paid her board for a fortnight, but she keeps pleading that as soon as she is well, and can go out, she will get remittances which have been delayed."

"Oh, she is ill, then?"

"So she says. But I'm not sure, miss, it isn't just an excuse to work upon my compa.s.sion, for why should she have to go out for remittances?

She stops in her room, lying upon a sofa, and makes a deal of bother with her meals being carried up so many pairs of stairs, though it's hardly worth while her having them at all, she eats so little. Yet she doesn't look a bit different from what she did when she was supposed to be well and going about as much like anybody else as one of her sort could _ever_ do."

"What do you mean?" asked Joan, whose curiosity was fired.

"Only that she is, and was, more a ghost than a human being, with her great, hollow, black eyes, like burning coals, set deep under her thick eyebrows and overhanging forehead; with her thin cheeks--why, miss, they almost meet in the middle--her yellow-white skin, her tall, gliding figure and stealthy way of walking, so that you never hear a sound till she's at your back."

"Queer kind of boarder," commented Joan.

"That she is, miss; and when she applied for a room, I would have said we were full up, but in those days we had several of our best rooms empty, and, strange as she was, her clothes were so good, and the luggage on the four-wheeler waiting outside was so promising, as you might say, that it did seem a pity to send away two guineas a week because Providence had given it a scarecrow face. So I showed her the best back room on the top floor----"

"Next to mine," cut in Joan.

"If you will have it so, miss; and there she's been for the last six weeks, not having paid a penny since the end of the first month."

"What is the ghost's name and age?" the girl went on with her catechism.

"Her name, if one was to take her word, which I'm far from being certain of, is Mrs. Gone; and as for her age, miss, she might be almost anywhere between fifty and a hundred."