ad been lying about her."

Miss Tattersall looked obstinate, putting on that wooden enduring
expression peculiar to fair people with pale eyes.

"I don't believe she has come back," she said.

I continued to argue. I guessed that she had some piece of evidence in
reserve; also, that for some reason she was afraid to produce it. And at
last, as I had hoped, my foolish, specious arguments and apparent
credulity irritated her to a pitch of exasperation.

"Oh! you can talk till all's blue," she broke in with a flash of temper,
"but she hasn't come back."

"But..." I began.

"I know she hasn't," Miss Tattersall said, and the pink of her cheeks
spread to her forehead and neck like an overflowing stain.

"Of course if you know..." I conceded.

"I do," she affirmed, still blushing.

I realised that the moment had come for conciliation. "This is
tremendously interesting," I said.

She looked up at me with a question in her face, but I did not understand
until she spoke, that what had been keeping back her confession was not
doubt of my trustworthiness but her fear of losing my good opinion.

"I expect you'll think it was horrid of me," she said.

I made inarticulate sounds intended to convey an effect of reassurance.

"You _will_," she insisted, and gave her protest a value that I felt to be
slightly compromising. I could only infer that the loss of my good opinion
would be fatal to her future happiness.

"Indeed, I shan't," I protested, although I had to say it in a tone that
practically confirmed this talk of ours as a perfectly genuine flirtation.

"Men have such queer ideas of honour in these things," she went on with a
recovering confidence.

"Do you mean that you--peeped," I said. "Into Brenda's room?"

She made a _moue_ that I ought to have found fascinating, nodding
emphatically.

"The door wasn't locked, then?" I put in.

She shook her head and blushed again; and I guessed in a flash that she
had used the keyhole.

"But could you be sure?" I persisted. "Absolutely sure that she wasn't
there?"

"I--I only opened the door for a second," she said, "But I saw the bed. It
hadn't been slept in."

"And this happened?" I suggested.

"Just before I came down to prayers," she replied.

"Well, where is she?" I asked.

Miss Tattersall laughed. Now that we had left the dangerous topic of her
means of obtaining evidence, she was sure of herself again.

"She might be anywhere by this time," she said. "