hed her limit.

"Angelique wants her breakfast, child. She has been long astir. After
that the deluge!" quoted Mr. Dutton, with an attempt at lightness
which did not agree with his real depression.

Margot made heroic efforts to act as usual but they ended in failure,
and as soon as might be her guardian pushed back his chair and she
promptly did the same.

"Now I can ask as many questions as I please, can't I? First, where
are they?"

"They have gone across the lake, southward, I suppose. Toward whatever
place or town Adrian selects. He will not come back but Pierre will do
so, after he has guided the other to some safe point beyond the woods.
How soon I do not know, of course."

"Gone! Without bidding me good-bye? Gone to stay? Oh! uncle, how could
he? I know you didn't like him but I did. He was----"

Margot dropped her face in her hands and sobbed bitterly. Then ashamed
of her unaccustomed tears she ran out of the house and as far from it
as she could. But even the blue herons could give her no amusement,
though they stalked gravely up the river bank and posed beside her,
where she lay prone and disconsolate in Harmony Hollow. Her squirrels
saw and wondered, for she had no returning chatter for them, even when
they chased one another over her prostrate person and playfully pulled
at her long hair.

"He was the only friend I ever had that was not old and wise in
sorrow. It was true he seemed to bring a shadow with him and while he
was here I sometimes wished he would go, or had never come; yet now
that he has--oh! it's so awfully, awfully lonesome. Nobody to talk
with about my dreams and fancies, nobody to talk nonsense, nobody to
teach me any more songs--nobody but just old folks and animals! And he
went, he went without a word or a single good-bye!"

It was, indeed, Margot's first grief; and the fact that her late
comrade could leave her so coolly, without even mentioning his plan,
hurt her very deeply. But, after awhile, resentment at Adrian's
seeming neglect almost banished her loneliness; and, sitting up, she
stared at Xanthippe, poised on one leg before her, apparently asleep
but really waiting for anything which might turn up in the shape of
dainties.

"Oh! you sweet vixen! but you needn't pose. There's no artist here now
to sketch you, and I don't care, not very much, if there isn't. After
all my trying to do him good, praising and blaming and petting, if he
was impolite enough to go as he did----