"But you will keep me here?" Christina pleaded, a look of panic terror in her eyes. "You won't make me go back to Bramwell? You won't let me be given up to the police?" "We must talk it all over with Dr. Fergusson," was the gentle rejoinder. "I don't feel that I am quite strong enough to decide what is best for you to do, but Dr. Fergusson will know. He has such a sound judgment, and he judges rightly, as well as soundly." "It was cowardly of me to run away," the girl exclaimed, clasping her hands together with a curiously childish gesture; "but--I felt so alone--so frightened--and I had no proof that what I said was true. I have no proofs now. I can't even make it clear to you, that I am not telling a pack of lies." "Can't you?" Margaret smiled. "I don't think I want proofs of your truthfulness; you carry truth in your face. All the same, for your own sake, and for the sake of justice, I am sorry you can produce no proofs of your statement." "I can't do anything but give my word," the girl said despairingly. "Mother gave me the jewel just before she died. It was a great treasure of hers; she valued it immensely. I think she meant to tell me something more when she gave it me, only--the sentence she began was never finished. The two last words she spoke, the very last, were, 'Tell Arthur'--and then--she died." "Tell--Arthur?" The same startled look which the mention of that name had before brought into Margaret's eyes, flashed into them again. "Who was--Arthur?" "I--don't know. I never knew anything about my mother's people. I do not even know her maiden name. And that sounds so improbable, that it made my story about the jewel seem more than ever ridiculous, when I told it at Bramwell Castle." "What a strange complication," Margaret's dark eyes fixed themselves thoughtfully on Christina's face. "I wonder why your mother kept you in ignorance of her maiden name, and of her family? Have you any idea what made her so reticent? "No; until lately it never struck me how odd and unusual it is that I should not know these things. I never mixed with other girls. We lived a very isolated life, my father and mother and I, and I accepted everything in it without question. But now I realise that it was not ordinary and normal. And I often wonder about it. But--I shall never know what it all meant. They are dead--my father and mother, and the clergyman who knew us in Devonshire is dead; and, as I told you, the solicitor went to Africa; and I don't know where he is." "But these people with whom you lived--the Donaldsons. Surely they must know something of your history?"