Conscience Speaks."

"Is there anything interesting in the _Gazette_?" asked Mrs. Danvers, as
Hilary idly opened the sheets of the local paper and spread them out on
her knee.

Hilary happened to be in one of her most irritable humours that morning;
even the faithful Joan found no pleasure in her society and had gone off
to bathe with Nancy and Maud. She said it was the heat that made her feel
slack and tired, and her mother said anxiously that she was afraid she
did too much, whereat Hilary laughed sardonically, for no one knew better
than she that she did nothing at all from morning to night. Why, even
Nancy, who at least ate chocolates whenever she could get them, and read
novels assiduously all day long and in bed too, might with justice be
said to lead a busier life than she did. But, though Hilary often felt
vaguely dissatisfied at the way in which she dawdled through the days,
she had not strength of mind to bestir herself to pass them otherwise.
After all, what was there for her to do? she asked herself irritably.
She was supposed to have finished her education, and though she was dimly
aware that she was shamefully ignorant, there seemed no especial object
in her getting out her lesson-books and poring over them by herself.

But it was not the thought of her neglected opportunities that was making
her so peevish this morning. She was cross because she could make nothing
out of the number of suspicious facts that she had collected about
Margaret. Of what use was it to have a note-book crammed full of
well-grounded evidence that Miss Carson was an impostor of some sort if
she could not gather from all the mass of material she had collected in
what way she was imposing on them. It was enough, she thought, to make
any one cross. And unless she could discover something definite against
Miss Carson, Joanna would take her out to Los Angelos with her. But that,
Hilary told herself with a little spasm of inward anger, should never
come to pass.

"Hullo, Hilary! got the _Gazette_?" said Jack who, followed by Noel, and
indeed the two boys were never very far apart, strolled through the
window at that moment. "After you with it, I say."

"I have only just begun it myself," said Hilary, coolly tightening her
hold upon it, "so I am afraid you will have to wait."

"Well, it didn't look to us from the garden as though you were reading
it at all," grumbled Jack, "so you might just as well hand it over to us.
We want to t