or exclaimed sharply. "That is out of the question.
How can we change now?"

"By telling everybody everything," Margaret said. "They cannot do
anything very dreadful to us, can they?"

Eleanor gave a short and very mirthless laugh.

"They can't do anything very dreadful to you--no," she said. Then in a
perfectly expressionless voice, "You have quite made up your mind, then?"

"Oh, quite," Margaret said, eagerly relieved beyond measure to find that
Eleanor had received her announcement so quietly.

"And how do you mean to set about it?" Eleanor said in the same stony
sort of voice. "Am I to tell Mrs. Murray first, or are you to tell Mrs.
Danvers?"

"As I am up here I could tell Mrs. Murray," Margaret answered timidly,
"and then we could go down together and tell Mrs. Danvers. Oh, Eleanor,
you do not know how distressing it is to me to be deceiving everybody as
I am doing at present. I am sure one girl, Hilary, the second daughter,
knows that I am hiding something, and she is always trying to find out
what it is. She makes my life a burden to me," added Margaret
pathetically. "And it does make me so unhappy to feel that I cannot look
everybody honestly in the face and tell nothing but the truth. And they
all laugh at me, and make fun of me, and think me so silly and shy, and
Mrs. Danvers asked me last night if I would like to go to California with
her as a governess because I get on so well with her children."

"Are you doing any teaching, then?" Eleanor asked.

"Yes, I am a holiday governess to a little boy and a girl. Oh, I do not
mind that at all--they are very good children. It is Hilary, the second
daughter, that I do not like, and though some of the boys are nice, they
do not take much notice of me, and I can see they do not care for me at
all. And I used to think," added poor Margaret mournfully, "that all
young people of my own age would like me, and that I should enjoy myself
so much in their society. But that is not the worst part of it, it is the
feeling that I am in the house on false pretences, and that every time
they call me Miss Carson, and I answer to the name, I am telling a lie.
It is so--so horrible and dishonest."

"I see," said Eleanor slowly; "but I suppose it wasn't until you found
out that you didn't like being me that you began to worry about the
dishonesty of the plan."

"No, I suppose not," said Margaret rather uneasily. "But now that I have
found it out, I should not care to stay th