before dropping it on to Margaret's lap; "whose handkerchief have you
been stealing? 'M. A.' are not your initials."

Too late Margaret realised her mistake, and as she had done on the day
when she had failed to answer to her assumed name, she sent a quick,
apprehensive glance round the circle of faces to see if any one had
noticed her error. It appeared no one had, not even Hilary, on whose face
Margaret's uneasy glance rested last and longest. But Hilary's eyes were
fixed steadily on the pages of her book, and with a sigh of relief
Margaret slipped the handkerchief into her pocket. Little did she think
that when a quarter of an hour later Hilary rose and strolled slowly
away, it was to seek a retired corner, and under that startling headline
to make an extensive entry in the note-book.

But though it gave Hilary sincere satisfaction to be able to note that
Miss Carson laid claim to a handkerchief that was obviously not hers, she
was not able to deduce much from the discovery. However, she felt
convinced that she was laying the train to find out a great deal later
on, and as soon as she had collected a sufficient number of suspicious
facts, they would surely explain themselves.

When, as it often did, Margaret's conscience grappled very strenuously
with her, and told her that however much she might try to gloss over the
truth, she was behaving very badly to three people--to her grandfather,
to Mrs. Murray, and to Mrs. Danvers--poor Margaret would urge in her own
extenuation that though she had entered into the scheme entirely for her
own amusement she was now carrying it on solely to please Eleanor, and
that, wrong as it was, no doubt, to go on with it, it would have been
both cowardly and unkind of her to have thrown it up and by so doing
deprive Eleanor not only of the singing lessons by which she set such
store, and for which alone she had consented to the exchange, but a home
for the summer holidays.

"Her honour rooted in dishonour stood.
And faith unfaithful kept her falsely true."

Those lines sprang unawares to Margaret's mind one day when she was
rather sadly reviewing the position in which she had placed herself, and
they appeared to her to fit the situation so exactly that they were
frequently in her thoughts, and Hilary, to her intense gratification,
heard her murmur them to herself one day when she thought herself alone.
The quotation was one copied into the note book under the heading, "A
Guilty