to her
voice--not annoyance, not even constraint--more like a sort of repressed
anxiety and painful apprehensiveness. 'Indeed! No, I do not
remember--what were you going to say?'

For Miss Mildmay had stopped abruptly. She was seated opposite Jacinth,
and as she got to her last words, some consciousness made her glance
across the table at her elder niece. In an instant she saw her mistake,
and recalled her own vague warnings to the girls to avoid allusions to
Lady Myrtle's family history. But she was far from cowardly, and
essentially candid. And in her mind there had been no mingling of any
selfish motive; nothing but the desire to prevent any possible annoyance
to their kind old friend had prompted her few words of advice to the
girls. And now the strange look--a look almost of restrained anger--on
Jacinth's face positively startled her.

'I may have been mistaken in my impression that the family in question
was in any way related to you,' she said quietly. 'One should be more
cautious in such matters.'

'Yes,' said Lady Myrtle, nervously, 'I think you must have been
mistaken. I do not know anything of such people, and Harper is not a
very uncommon name. By the way, that reminds me--was it you, my dear?'
and she turned somewhat abruptly to Frances--'was it not you who once
mentioned some school-fellows of the name, and afterwards something was
said which removed the impression that they could possibly be Elvedon
Harpers? I am confused about it.'

All this time Frances's eyes had been fixed on her plate; she had
scarcely dared to breathe since her aunt's allusion. Now she looked up,
bravely, though her cheeks were flaming and her heart beating as if to
choke her. An inner voice seemed to tell her that the moment had come
for _something_ to be said--the something which even Camilla Harper in
her letter had not debarred her from, which her own mother had hoped
some opportunity might arise for.

And in spite of Jacinth's stony face, and her aunt's evident wish to
change the subject which she herself had brought on to the _tapis_,
Frances spoke out.

'Yes, Lady Myrtle,' she said clearly. 'It was I that spoke about Bessie
and Margaret Harper. They were at school with us then, and before that,
their big sister Camilla was there. But they've left now, I'm afraid,'
and her voice trembled a little. 'I think it's because their father's
very ill, and it costs a lot, and they're not at all rich. They're the
very nicest gir