When Jack came back with his report another short consultation was held.

Edward's having gone up to bed made it impossible to hide their booty in any of the boys' bedrooms.

"What about your spare bedroom?" said Tommy; "you've got a biggish one, I know."

"Miss Carson is sleeping there," said Jack. "But I tell you what, she's not using the dressing-room. I know, because the girls keep some of their swaggerest dresses and things there. And there are heaps of empty drawers. So let's shove this thing into one of them."

Having reached the dressing-room un.o.bserved, and closed the door and turned on the light, they looked round for a safe hiding-place. And that was not easily found. The drawers, far from being empty, were full either of blouses laid away in tissue paper, or of furs smothered in camphor.

The hanging wardrobe, too, was full of dresses, and the drawer beneath of hats.

"Oh, bother!" said Tommy crossly, "what an endless amount of room girls seem to want for their things!" Then suddenly his expression changed and he dived under the bed and dragged out a small trunk.

"The very thing. What luck! It's quite empty, and evidently hasn't been used for ages, the lid is all covered with dust. Probably no one even knows it is here. Shove in the bundle. Shall I lock it? Yes, I think I will. Then if any prying housemaid comes along and wants to look inside she won't be able to."

He slipped the key into his pocket, and the three boys left the room.

But mad as this practical joke was, the idea to which it had given rise in Hilary's mind was even more outrageous. For she had taken it into her head that Margaret was connected with the burglaries; and that when she was still far from guessing that the proceeds of one of them were actually locked up in her trunk. Hilary's suspicions were founded upon nothing more tangible than the fact that Margaret's cheeks were unusually pink that morning when the burglaries were being discussed. And she forgot that Margaret had just come in from playing croquet in the sun without a hat.

For some days Tommy, and in a lesser degree Noel and Jack, enjoyed themselves hugely. Colonel Baker was not the man to sit down tamely under his loss, and he stormed at the police for not restoring his property, interviewed the editors of the local papers, offered rewards for the apprehension of the thieves, and generally made a great stir in the matter. Presently Noel and Jack began to fear the consequences of their rash act, and they urged Tommy to smuggle his father's property out of their house and into his own. But Tommy turned a deaf ear to them, would not give up the key, and said they must keep up the joke a little longer.

Then, just as Noel and Jack were about to declare that they had had enough of it, Tommy received an unexpected invitation to Scotland, and in the hurry of his departure went off with the key in his possession. So, greatly to their annoyance, the Danvers boys found themselves compelled to leave the things where they were.

CHAPTER XII

ELEANOR MEETS MARGARET'S AUNT

In spite of the liking that both Edward and Nancy had come to show for her society, Margaret often felt very lonely at The Cedars, far more lonely than she would have believed it would be possible for her to be in a big household of lively boys and girls. Edward was a boy of many occupations and had much to do besides playing croquet with her, and Hilary often claimed Nancy's companionship even when she did not particularly wish for it just for the spiteful pleasure of depriving Margaret of it. So that Margaret was thrown very much on her own resources--so much so, indeed, that she sometimes wondered with a touch of wistfulness if she was any gayer in the midst of this merry, chattering crowd of young people than she had been in the silent old house that she had left so gladly one short month ago.

But, at any rate, her health had improved in a marked degree since she had come to Seabourne. That was, no doubt, due to the fact that, encouraged to do so by Mrs. Danvers, Margaret spent much of her time out of doors. And as she had discovered that the afternoon was the best time to visit Eleanor, Margaret generally started for Windy Gap directly after lunch, and the pure, breezy air of the downs acted as an excellent tonic.

And Eleanor, now that she knew that Margaret had no intention of ousting her from her quarters at Rose Cottage, always welcomed her warmly, and many were the long conversations that the two girls enjoyed in the little arbour in the corner of the kitchen garden that had witnessed their first momentous interview.

Margaret could reach Windy Gap now in a little under an hour, for she had found out many short cuts across the gra.s.s, by means of which she avoided the long, twisting high-road that ran by the edge of the cliffs altogether. And by leaving the steep lane that led from the little village in the hollow up to Rose Cottage before it brought her to the front gate she could skirt below the wall that enclosed the domain and enter the kitchen garden by a side gate without coming in sight of the windows at all. It was Eleanor who had shown her this mode of entry and who had also told her that the early hours of the afternoon between two and four were the ones on which Margaret could most surely count on finding her alone, for Mrs. Murray always took a nap after lunch and was not visible again until tea-time. If Margaret found her days at The Cedars empty and somewhat long, Eleanor up at Rose Cottage had nothing at all to complain of in that respect.

"My dear Margaret," she said one day, "you must have led a strenuous life from your youth up if, even when you are supposed to be taking things easy, you have had such a course of study, as I am compelled to pursue in your place, mapped out for you. If your grandfather had wished you to become a naturalised Italian he couldn't have been keener on your acquiring a thorough knowledge of the language. He never writes to me, but I know he wrote a long letter to Mrs. Murray the other day hoping that I was getting on with my studies and that neither she nor Madame Martelli permitted me to mope and dream my time away in the profitless, silly way that had of late become habitual to me, and which was admirably adapted, if the habit were encouraged, to weaken my brain permanently."

Margaret coloured faintly as Eleanor quoted that pa.s.sage from Mr.

Anstruther's letter. For a moment she almost imagined that she could hear her grandfather's caustic voice speaking to her, and though what he had said was not particularly flattering, she knew that it contained a certain amount of truth.

"Mrs. Murray wrote back and told him," Eleanor went on, "that I was making capital progress both with my singing and with the language, and that Madame Martelli was exceedingly pleased with me. She also said that I showed no disposition at all to mope, but was as busy and as brisk as a bee from morning to night. And so I am," said Eleanor with a laugh.

"Madame Martelli sees to that. We have breakfast here every morning at eight, and by a quarter to nine I am down at Milan Cottage, which is the name of Madame's house, and I study and sing with her until half-past twelve, when I come home. We lunch at one, have tea at four, and directly after tea I go down to Milan Cottage again and am taken for a little walk by Madame. At half-past seven Mrs. Murray and I dine, and at half-past nine we go to bed. And that has been my daily life for the last three weeks."

But there was no need to ask Eleanor if she was satisfied with it. Every line of her face expressed radiant happiness, and though she spoke jestingly of the way in which her nose was kept to the grindstone, Margaret knew that she was really revelling in this chance of getting the instruction in Italian that she wanted. And as for the singing lessons, their value, she declared vehemently, was beyond price to her. Any time during the last two years she would, she said, have gladly lived in a hovel, fared on bread and water, and gone barefoot and in rags for the sake of them.

"Sometimes I wake up in the night and think I am only dreaming a beautiful dream," she said, "and that when I really am awake I shall find myself back in Hampstead in the ugly little dingy room that I shared with two little girls. And then I have to light my candle and look round me and a.s.sure myself that I really am in the pretty white bedroom that Mrs.

Murray has given to me here, and that my good fortune is a reality and not a dream."

"Has your life been a very unhappy one?" Margaret asked her gravely one day.

"I have often been very unhappy," Eleanor answered thoughtfully; "but that, of course, is different to having had an unhappy life. Of course, my mother's and my father's death was a great grief to me, and when the sense of the awful loss their death was to me grew less the resentment I felt at my changed circ.u.mstances made me awfully bitter and unhappy for a time. For I can tell you it was a violent change. Up to the age of thirteen I lived as if I were going to be rich all my life and was the spoilt darling of my parents and of every one round me. After that I was a pupil teacher, taken in literally out of charity, in a second-rate suburban school. I am sure for a time I must have behaved too hatefully for words, and if Miss McDonald had sent me to the workhouse it would have served me right. But she knew that she was the only friend I had, and was awfully good to me. If I had only been older when the crash came I daresay I should have been better provided with friends; but at that age I wanted no friends except my own horses and dogs, and my father and mother were always too wrapped up in each other to care to make friends.

So that was really why at their death I was left so utterly stranded, and had Miss McDonald not come forward to my rescue I would have gone, I suppose, to a charity school. She was, as I say, awfully good to me. You see, she understood, and that made all the difference. She had gone through much the same sudden change of fortune herself, for she had never been brought up to work for her living either. Somehow she did not say much, but she made me see the utter uselessness of repining and taught me how much braver it was to accept things as they are and to make the best of them. And so I set my teeth and made the best of them, or rather tried to make the best of them, which isn't quite the same thing, but still the best I could do. And I was getting sort of resigned to my lot when the idea came to me that I had a voice, and I went to see Signor Vanucci. An unknown girl and a famous man like that! The utter cheek of it, Margaret!

But I have told you all about it and the hopes he raised, which were only to be dashed to the ground by his unexpected death. It took me months and months to get over it; in fact, in the sense of the word I never did get over it; even the gradual down-fall of the school and the awful struggle that Miss McDonald was going through never seemed to me as real as my own disappointment. I sometimes think, Margaret, that I must be horribly selfish and heartless. And then through you, Margaret, this second chance came, and though I held back at first, I seized it gladly and mean to hold it as long as I can, although I know," she added, "how very atrociously I am behaving to you and Mrs. Murray."

"Oh!" said Margaret in surprise, for this was the very first time Eleanor had admitted as much.

"Of course, I always knew I was doing wrong," Eleanor said, "but I tried to hush my conscience up. I can't hush it up any longer, but," she added with much vigour, "it needn't think that I am going to pay any attention to what it says, for I am not."

Margaret could scarcely help smiling at the defiant note in Eleanor's voice. The latter turned suddenly and laid her hand on Margaret's knee.

"Don't judge me too hardly, Margaret," she said. "I know you think me selfish and callous, and utterly without any decent feelings at all to be deliberately keeping you out of your own name, and to be taking everything that ought by rights to belong to you. But you don't know what this chance means to me. You can't even dimly conceive it. It is just the turning-point of my life.

"'There is a tide in the affairs of men, Which taken at the flood leads on to fortune, Omitted, all the voyage of their life Is bound in shallows and miseries.

On such a full sea are we now afloat, And we must take the current when it serves, Or lose our ventures.'

"There, Margaret, doesn't that fit our case exactly? Shallows and miseries are Hampstead and the school, and the full sea is the chance you are giving me."

"You see, Margaret," she went on earnestly, "a voice is not quite like any other gift. If you don't train it when you are young you might as well not train it at all. It is too late when you are old, and then your gift is thrown away--wasted. Even as it is Madame Martelli says that I have no time to lose. She wants me to go to Milan next spring."

"To Milan!" Margaret exclaimed.

"Or to Paris," Eleanor went on half absently.

"To Paris!" Margaret echoed again.

"Don't remind me that I can't go!" Eleanor exclaimed fiercely, springing to her feet and beginning to pace up and down the path in front of the arbour, "for, of course, I know it without being told. I won't look forward, I won't, I won't! I will go on living in the present which is giving me all I want. The future is too gloomy and uncertain to be thought of yet, and so, _hey presto_!" and her brow cleared as if by magic, "I refuse to think of it."

The end of one of Eleanor's rapid speeches, in the course of which she could pa.s.s with astounding swiftness from one mood to another, always left Margaret with a slight feeling of bewilderment. In the present instance she had been greatly moved by Eleanor's impulsive appeal to her not to think badly of her, and had just been about to a.s.sure her that indeed she had never judged her conduct hardly when Eleanor had gone on to justify herself, to speak of her future plans, and had wound up as suddenly by refusing to consider the future at all.

No wonder, then, that Margaret, with whom speech was never very ready, felt at a loss what to answer when Eleanor, pausing in her restless march to and fro, asked her abruptly what she was thinking of.

"You listen, listen, listen always so silently, my little pale Margaret,"

she said, "and you look so grave and so wise, but never a word do you say."

"It is because you talk so fast and tell me so much that I have not time to answer one thing before you go on to another," said Margaret.

"Well, you never answered my question just now. Tell me, do you despise me for my selfishness?"

"No," said Margaret, with sudden earnestness, "I like you too much."

"Really and truly, Margaret?"

"Really and truly," Margaret made reply. "You know I liked you from the first moment I saw you in the waiting-room. You were the first girl of my own age that I had ever spoken to, and I shall never forget how I stood by the window watching you as you did your exercise, and wished you were my friend."

"And a pretty friend I have been to you," interrupted Eleanor. "I stole your name and everything that belongs to you, and, by the way, that reminds me----"