I shall mention to no one the reason of your dismissal; but I fear that the matter will to some extent ooze out, through the various inquiries which it has been necessary to make." "Yours faithfully," "J. PETERSON." CHAPTER X Dot's Opinion "BY the bye, Pattie, were you out this morning about half-past eleven?" Mr. Cragg put the question at tea-time, nothing leading up to it. "Half-past eleven! Yes; just about then I took Dot for a walk." "I couldn't find Mrs. Cragg, so I tried to find you, and your door was locked." Mrs. Cragg writhed, conscious of a change of colour. "Was it? I remember. I came back with Dot to get my purse, and I could not get in either. Somebody must have locked it by accident, or else the bolt may have slipped. It seemed all right a little later, when we came back again." "You don't know who locked it, my dear?" Cragg noticed his wife's uncomfortable look. "How should I know, pray?" demanded Mrs. Cragg. "Somebody probably knows. It might be you or any one." "As if I troubled myself with Pattie's concerns! I'm much too busy." "Pattie's concerns have to be attended to, like everybody else's concerns, now and then," Cragg said, with a kind look at the girl. Pattie was gazing at Mrs. Cragg, and did not see the look. A recollection had come to mind of finding her cupboard that afternoon in a disordered state. Pattie was very neat, and she always knew exactly where each article in box, or drawer, or cupboard lay. She had supposed that the girl had been turning out her things for dusting purposes. But the discomfited expression and reddened colouring of Mrs. Cragg's face suggested something different. Pattie, however, said nothing. "Anyhow, I'll take a look at the lock, and see if it wants oiling," remarked Cragg,—"eh, Pattie?" "Thank you very much," Pattie answered; and the subject was dropped. Now that Mrs. Cragg had gained the information she wanted, the question arose—how to use it? She could not tell her husband what she had learnt, because she dared not tell him by what mode she had learnt it. She dared not refer to Pattie's past in the presence of Pattie. The questions that she had meant to put to Pattie became impossible, in the face of her own secret knowledge. She had small command of feature, and she knew that at any moment her face might betray her. It was disgusting, she said to herself. To think of a girl, who might have been a convict's daughter but for the forbearance of this Mr. Peterson, fondling and petting Dot half the day, sitting at their table, being called "Miss Pattie" by the servant—for upon that Mr. Cragg had insisted. The whole thing was really too bad.