e.

"He's gone, sir; he's gone at last!" cried Mrs. Peckover, shutting the
house door on the parting guest with inhospitable rapidity, and locking
it with elaborate care and extraordinary noise.

"I must manage to make it all safe with Master Zack tomorrow night;
though I don't believe I have said a single word I oughtn't to say,"
thought she, slowly ascending the stairs. "But Mr. Blyth makes such
fusses, and works himself into such fidgets about the poor thing being
traced and taken away from him (which is all stuff and nonsense), that
he would go half distracted if he knew what I said just now to Master
Zack. Not that it's so much what I said to _him,_ as what he made out
somehow and said to _me._ But they're so sharp, these young London
chaps--they are so awful sharp!"

Here she stopped on the landing to recover her breath; then whispered to
herself, as she went on and approached Mr. Blyth's door:

"But one thing I'm determined on; little Mary shan't have that Hair
Bracelet!"

* * * * *

Even as Mrs. Peckover walked thinking all the way up-stairs, so did Zack
walk wondering all the way home.

What the deuce could these extraordinary remonstrances about his present
to Madonna possibly mean? Was it not at least clear from Mrs. Peckover's
terror when he talked of asking Blyth whether Madonna really had a Hair
Bracelet, that she had told the truth after all? And was it not even
plainer still that she had let out a secret in telling that truth, which
Blyth must have ordered her to keep? Why keep it? Was this mysterious
Hair Bracelet mixed up somehow with the grand secret about Madonna's
past history, which Valentine had always kept from him and from
everybody? Very likely it was--but why cudgel his brains about what
didn't concern him? Was it not--considering the fact, previously
forgotten, that he had but fifteen shillings and threepence of
disposable money in the world--rather lucky than otherwise that Mrs.
Peckover had taken it into her head to stop him from buying what he
hadn't the means of paying for? What other present could he buy for
Madonna that was pretty, and cheap enough to suit the present state
of his pocket? Would she like a thimble? or an almanack? or a pair of
cuffs? or a pot of bear's grease?

Here Zack suddenly paused in his mental interrogatories; for he had
arrived within sight of his home in Baregrove Square.

A change passed over his handsome face: he frowned, and his colo