"I wonder whether it would be wrong of me to take advantage of the information this telegram has given me; whether I might go to Graystone, too?" "But, you see, there is no actual address on the message," Cicely answered, her quicker woman's wit having discovered the omission. "Graystone post office is mentioned, but it is obvious that for some reason the lady's own address has been left out. I--don't feel that I can give any advice when I know none of the circumstances, but--it seems like taking an unfair advantage to--to act on this telegram, which you are not supposed to have seen at all." "And some fools in this world declare a woman has no sense of honour," Rupert exclaimed with a short laugh. "You can give me points about honour, that's certain. Of course, you are right," he laughed again, a rueful, rather bitter little laugh. "I can't go and hunt her out on the strength of a telegram I was never meant to see. But, my God! it is hard to keep away." He turned from Cicely, and, putting his arms upon the mantelpiece, leant his head upon them for a moment--only for a moment--then he straightened himself, and said quietly-- "After all, I have got to forget this telegram, ignore it, and make myself feel that things are 'as they were.'" "I am so sorry, Rupert," Cicely said gently, answering the look on his face rather than his actual speech. "Is there nothing anybody can do for you?" "You dear and kind little person," he answered. "No, there is nothing. Mrs. Stanforth is my friend, the best friend man ever had, and if, just now, she finds it best that there should be silence between us, I am ready to accept her decision. Only silence is--the very devil," he ended, with again a rueful laugh. * * * * * That telegram to Sir Arthur Congreve would have been despatched on the previous day, but for Margaret's sudden and startling collapse during her conversation with Christina. The girl's mention of the pendant which she asserted had been given her by her mother; and, the sight of the pendant itself, had produced in the elder woman a terrible excitement, which had ended in her sinking back amongst her pillows in a dead faint. The words she had spoken before she became unconscious, had seemed to Christina like the incoherent ramblings of a delirious person, and in the alarm caused by Margaret's unconsciousness, she had set them aside, and to all intents and purposes forgotten them. Indeed, so little importance had she attached to them, that when Dr. Fergusson came to see his patient, Christina only accounted for Margaret's sudden collapse, by the long and interesting conversation in which they had been engaged, and she added in accents of self-reproach-- "I think I ought not to have come here at all, and certainly I ought not to have shown her how upset and frightened I was."