d towards the door. As she went her foot
caught in Mrs. Danver's ball of pink wool; she picked it up, replaced it
on Mrs. Danvers' lap, and in another minute was gone from the room. The
little action, which was one that she had performed a dozen times a day
for Mrs. Danvers since she had been in the house, was sufficient to cause
that hapless lady to change her mind again about the character of her
holiday governess.

"Oh, no, my dear!" she called out, "I don't, indeed, I don't!"

There was no answer, for Margaret had already shut the door behind her.
Mrs. Danvers turned to Hilary:--

"It is all a pack of rubbish that you have been telling me," she said
angrily, scarcely knowing what she was saying. "I don't believe a word of
it!"

"Just because she picked up your ball of wool!" Hilary exclaimed, with a
disdain which, though neither dutiful nor polite, was perhaps not
altogether unmerited. "Really, mother!"

Meanwhile Margaret, with anger burning hot within her, had walked
straight out of the house. Nothing, she told herself passionately, should
induce her to stay a moment longer within it, or ever to enter it again.

Where she was going, or what she was going to do she did not stop to
think. The sole idea that possessed her was to get as far away from
The Cedars as quickly as she could. Never again, she told herself
passionately, would she see or speak to one of the Danvers again. And
just as she had come to that resolution she ran full tilt into all of
them.

By that time dusk had fallen, and the fog which was coming on thicker
than ever, made it almost impossible for any one to see where they were
going, so that as she turned a corner of the road which they were
approaching from the other direction, she was in the middle of them
before she was aware of it. The three girls had met the boys on the
parade, and had walked up with them.

"Whither away in such a hurry, Miss Carson?" said Geoffrey, who was the
first to recognise her by the light of the street lamp, close to which
the encounter took place.

"Ask your mother--ask Hilary," Margaret cried bitterly, and breaking away
from him, as he would have detained her, darted across the road, and was
immediately swallowed up by the fog.

"Something has happened; she mustn't go like that!" cried Geoffrey,
starting after her. But Margaret's movement away from them all had been
so sudden and so quick that he could find no trace of her in the dense
fog, and realisi