comes out.

"Yours affectionately,

"MARY BURT."

"What does it mean?--oh, what can it mean?" faltered Milly, holding out
the missive to Tims.

"It means you've been in for Greats, my girl, and done first-rate. But
the strain's been a bit too much for you, and you've had another
collapse of memory. You had one in the end of November. You've been
uncommonly well ever since, and worked like a Trojan, but you've not
been quite your usual self, and I'm glad you've come right again, old
girl. Let me tell you the whole business."

Tims did so. She wanted social tact, but she had the tact of the heart
which made her hide from Milly how very different, how much more
brilliant and attractive Milly the Second had been than her normal self.
She only made her friend feel that the curious episode had entailed no
disgrace, but that somehow in her abnormal condition she had done well
in the Schools, and probably touched the top of her ambition.

"But I don't feel as though it had been quite straightforward to hide it
up so," said Milly. "I shall write and tell Miss Burt and Aunt Beatrice,
and tell the Fletchers when I go to them."

"You'll do nothing of the kind, you stupid," snapped Tims. "You'll be
simply giving me away if you do. What is the good? It won't happen
again unless you're idiot enough to overwork yourself again. Very likely
not then; for, as an open-minded, scientific woman, I believe it to have
been a case of hypnotism, and in France and the United States they'd
have thought it a very interesting one. But in England people are so
prejudiced they'd say you'd simply been out of your mind; although that
wouldn't prevent them from blaming me for hypnotizing you."

While Tims spoke thus, there was a knocking without, and a maid
delivered a note for Miss Flaxman. Milly held it in her hands and
studied it musingly before opening the envelope. Her pale, troubled face
colored and grew more serious. Tims had not mentioned Ian Stewart, but
Milly had not forgotten him or his handwriting. Tims knew it too. She
restrained her excitement while Milly turned her back and stood by the
window reading the note. She must have read them several times over, the
two sides of the sheet inscribed with Stewart's small, scholarly
handwriting, before she turned her transfigured face towards the
anxiously expectant Tims.

"Tims, dear," she said at length, smiling tremulously, and laying
tremulous hands on Tims's two thin shoulde