‘This is extraordinary news,’ said Mrs. Meredith, dropping into the nearest chair. She was trembling with this renewed agitation. ‘And you knew it, Cara; you have been his confidante? Oh, what a strange mistake we have all made!’ ‘It was not my fault,’ said Cara, softly. She gave a furtive glance at Edward as she spoke, and his mother looked at him too. Edward’s countenance was transformed, his eyes were lit up, smiles trembling like an illumination over his face. Mrs. Meredith’s heart gave a leap in her motherly bosom. She might have been wounded that it was none of her doing; but she was too generous for so poor a thought. He will not go to India now, she said to herself in her heart. The pang which Cara had given her unwittingly was nothing to the compensation thus received from her equally unconscious hands. CHAPTER XLIII. THE WORST SCRAPE OF ALL. A rumour had spread in the little hamlet which had gathered about the junction, of some travellers who had missed their train. The faintest rumour echoes a long way in the quiet of the country, and as the village was chiefly formed of the cottages of railway labourers and porters, it was natural that this kind of report should travel more swiftly than anything else. Oswald and his companion walked down the still road in the soft dusk like two ghosts. In the mind of Agnes nothing less than despair was supreme. What was to become of her? Shame, disgrace, destruction, the loss of all things. How could she dare to face the wondering women in the House? Sister Mary Jane might understand her, but who else? And what comments there would be, and what talk! And home--how could she go home? To spend a night at an inn at all was something entirely strange to Agnes. But thus--all alone, and with a gentleman; one who was not related to her, of whom she could give no account or befitting explanation! A wild fancy seized her of flying from him, disappearing into some corner behind a high hedge, some nook under the trees. But this was as futile as everything else, and might be worse than anything else. She had the bondage of custom before her, though she had put herself into a position in which all her familiar habits were thrown to the winds. And yet going to the inn with Oswald was about as bad as spending a night in direful desolation in the dark corner of a field. The one was not much better than the other! If she could have got away at once, it was the field she would have chosen. She could have crept into a corner in the dark, and there waited, though she might have been frightened, till the morning broke and there was an early train. Had she but done that at once, stolen away before he could see what she was doing! But she could not disappear from his side now, at the risk of being pursued and argued with and entreated and brought back. So, with her mind in a blank of despair, not knowing what to think, she walked close by his side between the hedgerows through the soft darkness. Oh,