"Yes, mamma," she said confusedly, and followed Lady Haredale into the house, directed the envelope in the modern, upright, school-girl hand, which certainly bore no resemblance to Lady Haredale's sloping penmanship, and prepared to take it to the post-office. As she came down-stairs she saw Tory standing in the hall, her legs apart and her hands behind her back. "Amethyst," she said, "Kat and I mean you to know. It's quite true what I said just now. Una's gone nearly off her head over Tony getting married. She's a perfect fool about him. But it's his fault, he's an awful spoon is Tony. So is she; you'd better go and talk to her." "But--she's a child," said Amethyst; so much taken aback, that she forgot that the precocious Tory was more of a child still. "Oh--little girls are amusing. He thought it didn't matter. Una ought to have known it was nonsense." "But mother said it was nonsense, just now--of Una's." "Very likely. That's what she would think." Amethyst turned and fled. She felt as if she could neither speak nor look. A horror seized her of "kind good Tony," and she ran across the park, in haste to get the note addressed to him out of her hand. As she was about to put it into the box, Sylvester Riddell came up with a handful of letters. "Good afternoon, Miss Haredale," he said, "I hope this lovely weather will last for my cousin's party at Loseby." The sense of unaccustomed secrecy made Amethyst give a guilty start; she dropped the letter, Sylvester picked it up, and the address in the clear-marked writing caught his eye. He noticed it, of course, by no word or look, but her crimson blush startled him. Why should she write to a man whom, in common with Lucian Leigh, he detested; and why, if she did so, should she look so frightened and ashamed? She dropped the letter into the box, and with a murmured excuse of being in a hurry, went back with winged footsteps, but a heavy heart. She took herself to task for her folly in being so much startled and upset, but the shadow of half-understood evil is very frightful to a young soul; and she turned, with almost a sense of relief, from her mother's revelations, to what she believed to be more within her comprehension, Una's "silliness" about Major Fowler. She had, of course, seen many girls who were "silly," and meaning to scold and coax Una out of such folly, went straight up to her room in search of her, opening the door without waiting for an answer to her knock. The girl was crouched up in a chair all in a heap, and glared at Amethyst under her hair, as if she would have liked to spring at her. "What is the matter, Una?" said Amethyst. "Won't you tell me all about it? Why are you so miserable, you poor little dear?" "I mean to tell you. I hate to see you think the world is all sugar, when I know it is so wicked. I'll teach you knowledge of the world."