my fault."

Daisy looked at her steadily a moment, and then back at the photograph.

"Yes, yes," she said. "But you were with Diana when she died, were you
not? When did she die?"

Jeannie covered her face with her hands a moment, thinking intently, and
then Daisy spoke again.

"Why was I told she died five years ago?" she asked. "You told me so
yourself. Were you hiding anything?"

Again Daisy paused.

"Her husband came to England after her death," she said. "He stopped
with you, I remember, when I was living with you."

Once again she paused.

"Was there something dreadful, something disgraceful?" she asked. "Aunt
Jeannie, I must know. I must!"

CHAPTER XXIV.

Jeannie got up out of her chair, where she had been sitting ever since
Daisy entered. Daisy as she spoke had risen also from the writing-table,
and, still holding the photograph of Diana in her hand, stood by her.

"You must give me a moment, Daisy," she said. "I have got to think. And,
my dear, while I am thinking do not try to guess. I can't bear that you
should guess. I would sooner tell you than that."

Daisy was very white, and the bright spot of anger that burnt in her
cheeks when she entered the room had smouldered away. She nodded without
spoken reply.

Jeannie moved away from Daisy, and sat down in the window-seat at the
far end of the room. Already Daisy had guessed that there was something
disgraceful. Daisy remembered, too, that after Diana's supposed death
her husband had come to England. And then for one moment Jeannie's
spirit rose in impotent revolt against the bitter cruelty of this chance
by which Daisy had seen Diana's photograph. She herself, perhaps, had
been careless and culpable, in putting it on her table; but she had been
so preoccupied with all the perplexities of this last week that the
danger had not ever so faintly occurred to her. But now by this fatal
oversight Daisy had already guessed perilously near the truth.

She herself could invent no story to account for these things, and if
Daisy was told the whole truth, of which she guessed so much, that other
bitterness, the sense that Jeannie had cruelly betrayed her, would be
removed. She could comfort Daisy again, and (this was sweet to herself
also) show her how she loved her. She had done her very best to keep her
promise to Diana, and she had not spared herself in doing so; and now,
in spite of her efforts, so hard to make and so ungrudgingly made, half