he was met on the doorstep by most of the
members of the family, who crowded round him and shouted out the good
news that his granddaughter was found.

"Margaret at Wrexley Park!" he said, when he had alighted from the cab
and could make his voice heard. "How exceedingly strange that she should
have found her way there!"

"Well, I don't know," said Geoffrey. "If one shot by Windy Gap, which is
what she must have done in the darkness, she had only to keep on and on
and she would be bound to strike Wrexley next. You see, sir, it lies
right under the lee of the downs."

"Quite so, quite so," said Mr. Anstruther patiently. "But when I
commented on the singularity of the circumstance which had directed the
steps of my granddaughter towards Wrexley, I was not referring so much to
the relative geographical positions of Windy Gap and Wrexley, with which
indeed I am unacquainted, but----"

"You were thinking how funny it was that she should have fetched up at
her own aunt's house in the end," broke in Maud, for which unceremonious
interruption she received a glance of reproof from Mr. Anstruther, and
scant thanks afterwards from the other members of the family who had been
hanging delightedly on Mr. Anstruther's careful phraseology, and who had
all wanted to hear him finish his remark for himself.

Then Mr. Anstruther went up to Eleanor, who was standing a little apart
from all the others, and after subjecting her to a moment's severe
scrutiny, spoke abruptly:--

"I am glad your anxiety is at an end. I think you have been sufficiently
punished."

Eleanor smiled a little tremulously. The punishment had indeed been
sharp, although it had been nothing but the voice of her own conscience.

"Can you forgive me?" she said.

"Yes," he answered, in his cold, precise accents, "I can now. Though I
make no secret of the fact that, had my just resentment against you not
been softened by the anxiety we have shared in common, my reply to that
question would have been in the negative."

Then the motor from Wrexley having arrived, Mr. Anstruther made his
formal farewells and drove away, followed, it must be confessed, by a
sigh of universal relief at his departure.

When he had gone Eleanor became conscious that her position in the house
was rather a peculiar one. She had been dumped there, she reflected, just
as if she had been a bale of goods, and the person who had brought her
had neglected to remove her again. But, at any rate