Here Mrs. Damerel put her hand over the girl’s mouth, and with a look she never forgot went with her into the empty nest, from which the bird had flown. All Mrs. Damerel’s wits rallied to her on the moment to save the scandal which was inevitable if this were known. “Shut the door,” she said in a low quiet voice. “Rose is very foolish: because she thinks she has quarrelled with me, to make such a show of her undutifulness! She has gone up to town by the early train.” “Then you knew!” cried Agatha, with eyes as wide open as just now her mouth had been. “Do you think it likely she would go without my knowing?” said her mother; an unanswerable question, for which Agatha, though her reason discovered the imposture, could find no ready response. She looked on with wonder while her mother, with her own hands, tossed the coverings off the little white bed, and gave it the air of having been slept in. It was Agatha’s first lesson in the art of making things appear as they are not. “Rose has been foolish; but I don’t choose that Mary Jane should make a talk about it, and tell everybody that she did not go to bed last night like a Christian--and do you hold your tongue,” said Mrs. Damerel. Agatha followed her mother’s directions with awe, and was subdued all day by a sense of the mystery; for why, if mamma knew all about it, and it was quite an ordinary proceeding, should Rose have gone to town by the early train? Mrs. Damerel, however, had no easy task to get calmly through the breakfast, and arrange her household matters for the day, with this question perpetually recurring to her, with sharp thrills and shoots of pain--Where was Rose? She had been angry at first, deeply annoyed and vexed, but now other feelings struck in. An anxiety, which did not suggest any definite danger, but was dully and persistently present in her mind, like something hanging over her, took possession of her whole being. Where had she gone? What could she be doing at that moment? What steps could her mother take to find out, without exposing her foolishness to public gaze? How should she satisfy Mr. Incledon? how conceal this strange disappearance from her neighbors? They all took what people are pleased to call “a deep interest” in Rose, and, indeed, in all the late rector’s family; and Mrs. Damerel knew the world well enough to be aware that the things which one wishes to be kept secret, are just those which everybody manages to hear. She forgot even to be angry with Rose in the deep necessity of concealing the extraordinary step she had taken; a step enough to lay a young girl under an enduring stigma all her life; and what could she do to find her without betraying her? She could not even make an inquiry without risking this betrayal. She could not ask a passenger on the road, or a porter at the station, if they had seen her, lest she should thereby make it known that Rose’s departure had been clandestine. All through the early morning, while she