LITMIR.BIZ

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in passing the youth, who wore a loud waistcoat and had an immature moustache. She felt rather alarmed at her success. The young man responded with alacrity, and proceeded to follow the school at a discreet distance; followed when the "crocodile" turned to climb the hill; and was still in attendance when it reached the gate of the short drive.

      Stella throbbed with excitement. She wondered what he would do now; would he linger outside; would he return to-morrow and be there when they emerged for the walk, just to obtain a glimpse of her as they passed? She thought his appearance rather dreadful; but at any rate, he was a young man, an admirer; all that she regretted was that she could not write now and tell Maud Verrall how he had followed the school on a blazing hot day up a steep hill, all on her, Stella's, account!

      A game of tennis was in progress as the girls filed up the sloping drive and scattered on the edge of the lawn, and at this moment, as it happened, a ball was sent over the privet hedge into the road below. Stella saw her chance.

      "All right!" she shouted to the players. "I'll run and get it." And she raced back down the drive and through the open gate. There was the admirer lurking on the sidepath! He darted forward, an eager expression on his countenance that, even in her agitation, Stella remarked was sallow and spotty; also, as he grinned, she saw that his teeth were bad. What a pity! But it flashed through her mind that such drawbacks need not, when the time came, be cited to Maud. She would tell Maud, when they met, that he was "a picture!"

      Affecting not to see him, and with a fluttering heart, Stella pounced on the tennis ball that lay in the middle of the road; and "the picture," murmuring something she could not catch, pounced also, and thrust a piece of paper into her hand. Just at that moment, by all the laws of ill-luck, Miss Ogle herself came in sight, advancing along the road, with floating veil and fringed parasol, returning from a private constitutional.

      The letter that brought the appalling news to The Chestnuts of Stella's disgrace was addressed to Miss Augusta Carrington. Even the customary ignoring of unpleasant facts was not proof against such a staggering blow. Stella! the granddaughter, the niece, the child they had cherished and guarded and reared with such care—to think that she should have been detected in a vulgar intrigue, and could no longer be harboured at Greystones lest she should contaminate her schoolfellows! It was almost too terrible to contemplate, and for once the three ladies permitted themselves the freedom of natural behaviour. Augusta very nearly stormed; Ellen wept bitterly; grandmamma said: "Like mother, like daughter," in an awful voice, and "What's bred in the bone will out in the flesh." The household was steeped in gloom. They all regretted that there was no male head of the family to whom they could turn for advice in this distressing difficulty; and it was Augusta who at last suggested that Stella's godfather, Colonel Crayfield, should be consulted. Was he not an old friend of "poor Charles"? And only a few days ago there had come a letter from him saying that he was at home on short leave from India, asking for news of his little goddaughter.

      Augusta had answered the letter; how humiliating now, in the light of this subsequent catastrophe, to recall the hopeful description she had given of poor Charles's child! The confession of Stella's downfall, should they decide to consult Colonel Crayfield, would be a painful undertaking; but he was such a worthy, dependable character, and who could be more fitted, as they all agreed, to give counsel in such a terrible predicament than the child's own sponsor—the trusted friend of the dead father, since there was no male member of the Carrington family to whom they could appeal?

      Last time Colonel Crayfield came home, ten years ago, he had spent a couple of days at The Chestnuts—rather a trial for hostesses who were unaccustomed to the entertaining of gentlemen, but on the whole the visit was felt to have been a success. Mamma and Augusta had even suspected that he was attracted by Ellen, though, according to Carrington custom, neither had voiced the idea. Ellen, however, could have given him no encouragement, for nothing came of it, suitable as such an alliance would have seemed on both sides. Colonel Crayfield was that amphibious production of the Indian services—a military man in civil employ, holding responsible, well-paid office; on the occasion of his brief visit to The Chestnuts he had not disagreed with Miss Augusta when she expressed her admiration of missionary efforts in the East; he had only just tasted the wine that was offered him; he had not smoked in the house, though the pantry was at his disposal for the purpose. All these good points were recalled during the discussion that ensued as to whether he should be approached for advice concerning his goddaughter's future, and such recollections went far towards shaping the final decision of grandmamma and Augusta, tearfully supported by Ellen. The whole dreadful truth should be written to Colonel Crayfield, with an urgent invitation to visit The Chestnuts once more.

      Meantime Stella was on her way home, shamefaced, unhappy. The fuss at Greystones had been frightful, the whole affair bewildering—the condemnation, the feeling of hopeless inability to defend herself; then the hasty packing, the self-righteous, disparaging attitude of the girls, and the stares of the servants; the humiliating departure, sentinelled to the last moment by Miss Ogle herself, wrathful and stern, who put her into a compartment for ladies only, in the care of the guard.

      The time that elapsed between her return to The Chestnuts and the day of Colonel Crayfield's arrival was to Stella a species of purgatory. Grandmamma and the aunts hardly spoke to her, she was forbidden to go beyond the garden, no explanation of her conduct was invited, though, indeed, what explanation could she have given, since it was perfectly true that Miss Ogle had caught her receiving a note from a strange young man; and with it all she had not even had a chance to read the note—she would have given worlds to know what the young man had written!

      The culprit was sent to the station in the village wagonette to meet her godfather, and she welcomed the distraction, awkward though it would be to face Colonel Crayfield in the uncomfortable circumstances. The situation struck her as almost grotesque; here she was, driving through the familiar lanes in the late July sunshine, as an outcast and a sinner, to meet an old gentleman who had been summoned to sit in judgment upon her! And, after all, she had done nothing worse, nothing half so bad, as Maud Verrall; and Maud had not been expelled from school as a sort of leper. She wished Maud was at The Court; but that happy young creature was disporting herself in London, and Stella had not the spirit left to write to her.

      Arrived at the little countryside station, a six-mile drive from The Chestnuts, she seated herself on a bench to await the train from London, and gazed vacantly at the white palings, at the dazzling herbaceous border, butterflies floating above it. She felt sorely oppressed, but more from a sense of misfortune than from shame or repentance. How unlucky she was! The future held nothing enjoyable; she saw herself living on at The Chestnuts indefinitely. Grandmamma might die some day, but she and the aunts would grow older and older, and they would all continue to sing in church that they dared not choose their lot, and would not if they might. Stella remembered the case of Miss Spurt, the only daughter of a clergyman in a neighbouring parish, who, two or three years back, had run away with her father's groom-gardener. The scandal had petrified the county; whispers of it had reached Stella's sharp ears, though the subject was never mentioned in her presence at The Chestnuts. Now she wondered what had become of Miss Spurt, and she even began to sympathise with the poor girl's mad action.

      Supposing she herself were driven to do the same sort of thing; to elope, for example, with the solitary porter who stood leaning against the waiting-room wall, should he suggest such a desperate step! She regarded him with idle attention, feeling stupefied with the prevailing somnolence of the station, the heat of the shadeless, empty platform; he was a fresh-looking boy, with a cap on the back of his head and a curl of glistening hair plastered to his forehead. Suddenly he stood erect, stretched his arms, gave a loud yawn, and seized a handbell that he rang with deafening clamour. So here was the train at last, thank goodness!

      One or two people hurried, perspiring, breathless, on to the platform; a few more ran over the rails from the opposite side, there being no footbridge; the station-master emerged from his office and took up a commanding position. The train rumbled in.

      During the long, hot journey from London, Colonel Crayfield had been repenting his good-natured acquiescence to what seemed to him a rather exacting, inconsiderate request. At first his fancy had been tickled by the notion that he, an elderly bachelor, should present himself

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