f her. She left in a hurry that way just now, I expect,
because she didn't like your little sneering speech at her. You know you
have rather a sharp, unkind way with you sometimes, Hilary. Why don't you
get on better with her?"

"Because I don't like her," Hilary said curtly.

"But, my dear, why not?"

"Because I don't. I heard you persuading her to go to Los Angelos just
now," she added. "Did she say she would go?"

"No; I can't get her to say she would like to go, nor yet to say she
won't go," said Mrs. Danvers. "Now I should have thought it was a chance
she would have jumped at. But no; girls are so queer and independent
nowadays, there is no accounting for them."

"It is very ungrateful of her when you have been good enough to bother
about it," said Hilary, who, though she was delighted to hear that so far
the post in her sister's household was unfilled, for she cherished dreams
of going out to California with Mrs. Lascelles herself, would not let
slip the opportunity of running Margaret down to any one who would
listen. "Did she say why she wouldn't go?"

"Well, she did and she didn't," returned Mrs. Danvers, actually laying
down her knitting for a moment as a recollection of the embarrassment
Margaret had shown returned to her. "As far as I can gather, it is
because she would not be allowed to do so by somebody or other, but who
that somebody was she did not clearly explain to me."

By a few dexterous questions Hilary got her mother to repeat the gist of
the conversation that had just taken place between herself and the
holiday governess, and when she had finished there was a queer little
gleam in Hilary's eyes that Margaret would not have liked to have seen.

"She would not be allowed to go, and when asked why not, had said that
she would be prevented." Hilary turned these phrases over in her mind,
and as soon as she could do so unperceived, wrote them down in a little
note-book that she carried in her pocket.

For though she had now given up the practice she had originally started
of plying Margaret with embarrassing questions, and letting it be plainly
seen that none of the embarrassment Margaret showed at them was lost upon
her, the watch she kept on her every look and action, though secret, was
none the less vigilant. Perhaps even more so than it had been at the
beginning of Margaret's stay, for Hilary was so fascinated by her new
occupation of amateur detective that almost every word Margaret uttere