much to.'

'Yes,' agreed Margaret, 'I quite understand.'

[Illustration: And then Frances related the whole, Margaret listening
intently till almost the end.]

She was in a fever, poor child, and from no selfish motive assuredly, to
hear more about the mysterious house. But she restrained herself,
scrupulously careful in no way to force the other's confidence.

'When I said what Robin Redbreast looked like from the inside, I meant
from inside the gates,' began Frances, after a moment or two's
reflection. For she was scrupulously truthful. 'I've not been inside the
house--not farther than the porch. But the porch is like a little room,
it _is_ so pretty. I'll tell you how it all was; you may tell Bessie,
but not any one else, because, you see, there's quite a story about it.'

And then Frances related the whole, Margaret listening intently till
almost the end, when the little narrator, stopping for a moment to take
breath, after 'So you see our grandmother was her very dearest friend,
and she really seemed as if she could scarcely bear to let Jacinth go,
and--_isn't_ it like a real story?' saw, to her surprise, that her
hearer's face, instead of being rosier than usual, had now grown quite
pale.

'Why, Margaret, what's the matter? You look as if I had been telling you
a ghost-story, you're so white,' she exclaimed.

Margaret gave a little gasp.

'It is so strange,' she said. 'I'll tell you why it has made me feel so
queer. Mine is a sort of a secret, Frances; at least when we came here
to school mother told us not to talk about it. But I know I can trust
you, and what you've told me makes it seem as if somehow--I don't know
how to say what I mean--as if we must be a sort of relation to each
other, from our people long ago having been such friends. For, do you
know, Frances, Lady Myrtle Goodacre is our aunt--our great-aunt, that is
to say--father's own aunt?'

Frances stopped short and _almost_ clapped her hands.

'There now,' she said, 'I had a feeling there was something like that. I
_wish_ Jacinth hadn't stopped my speaking of you, when Lady Myrtle told
us her name used to be Harper.'

'Were you going to speak of us?' asked Margaret.

'Yes, it was on the very tip of my tongue. Indeed I believe I did get as
far as "There are some," when Jacinth stopped me. She said afterwards
that it is "common," when any one mentions a name, to say immediately,
"Oh, _I_ know somebody called that." I don't quite see why i