"Oh! no, they would know nothing. I only knew Mrs. Donaldson at all, because she was staying in the village near our home, and mother was kind to her children, when they were ill. She was in no way an intimate friend of ours. And the people--the very few people we knew in the village, were only acquaintances. There is nobody in the whole world who could vouch for my innocence." "It is a curious predicament. We can only ask Dr. Fergusson's advice, and act upon it. I wish I could understand why there is something so oddly familiar about your face and voice." Her own low voice was puzzled. "I believe I have asked you this before; but are you sure, quite sure, we never met until you saw me here?" "Quite sure," Christina answered emphatically. "I couldn't have forgotten you. But I think I must be very like somebody, for last night"--she shivered--"just as I crossed the hall of the Castle, I saw Lady Congreve give a big start, and she said to Lady Cicely quite loud, I couldn't help hearing her--'My dear Cicely, who is she like?' I think I must have a double somewhere." "I think you must," Margaret replied slowly. "It is very curious. But, to go back to the more vital matter of the moment. Did you bring away the jewel which has caused all this trouble?" "Why, yes," Christina answered simply. "It was on my neck when Sir Arthur saw it, and I never took it off. I can show it to you now." Slipping her hand inside her frock, the girl unfastened the slender gold chain, drew out the pendant, and handed it to the woman in the bed. "You see," she said, "it is very beautiful and very unique; that wonderful emerald, with the twisted letters above it; the letters----" "Yes--I see," Margaret's voice was low and hoarse, and Christina, roused from her absorption in her own thoughts of the jewel, and of all that had happened, started when she saw the expression on the other's face. "I see," Margaret repeated; "the emerald--with brilliants round it, and above it the twisted letters--A.V.C. But how comes it that your mother possessed this pendant with the letters A.V.C.? What does it mean? My dear child, what _does_ it mean?" CHAPTER XVIII. "YOU ARE MY OWN SISTER'S CHILD." "She has totally disappeared, and, of course, her disappearance makes Cousin Arthur more sure than ever that she is guilty; and oh! Rupert, it is just a horrid tangle, and I wish you had come home sooner." "So do I." Rupert, standing by the fireplace in Cicely's boudoir in Bramwell Castle, looked kindly down at his cousin; "but it is really a piece of good luck that I am here now. I expected to have to spend some weeks in Naples, but it turned out that young Jack had given us all a causeless scare. He hadn't got typhoid, only rather a good spurious imitation of it, and he is doing perfectly well. So, having wiped off an old score with him, I came away." "Wiped off an old score?" Cicely looked mystified.