"Is it?" Into the dark eyes there flashed for a second a look of bitterness, and then Margaret drew the other woman's hand down to her lips, and kissed it. "I wish I had your simple straightforward faith, dear old nurse of mine," she said wearily; "you are so sure things will come right, and that what hurts us is for our good. And I--I can't say, 'Thy will be done'; at least, I can't say it as if I meant it. But what did you bring in on that salver?" she asked, after a moment of silence, and with an effort at brightness. "There, my pretty; I nearly forgot it after all. It came when I was speaking to the butcher on the doorstep, and Mr. Mernside was here, so I waited to bring it in till he was gone." She had a purpose in lengthening her story, and chatting on garrulously whilst Margaret opened the orange envelope, for the faithful creature had seen the sudden dilation of her mistress's dark eyes, the whitening of her lips; had seen, too, how her hands shook as they unfolded the telegram. "I don't understand it," Mrs. Stanforth whispered shakily, when her eyes had scanned the few words before her. "I don't know what it means--Elizabeth--but--I must go--I must go--at once." The servant drew the flimsy paper from her trembling hands and read the message, shaking her head in bewilderment, as the sense of it penetrated to her brain. "I'm sure I don't know what it means no more than you do, dearie," she said. "Graystone. "Come at once; prepare for surprise. "MARION." CHAPTER IV. "I SUPPOSE IT WAS AN HOUR." "Poor dear James is the worthiest soul, but he has no more brains than a pin--the small kind of pin that you get in change for a farthing!" "James always seemed to me a good footman." "Rupert! He is an admirable footman. I haven't a word to say against him in that capacity. He does his duties with the beautiful regularity of an automatic machine. But move James from his own dear little beaten track, and he is lost, hopelessly, irrevocably lost!" "What beaten track has he left? and why is he rousing your ladyship's wrath?" Lady Cicely Redesdale, lying back in the cosiest chair of her cosy boudoir, swung her pretty foot to and fro, and glanced up at her tall cousin with one of her gay little laughs. Rupert Mernside, the son of her mother's sister, had always been to her more of elder brother than cousin, and from their earliest youth there had existed between them a frank _camaraderie_ which had never degenerated into flirtation, or drifted into any sentimental relationship. Cicely was in the habit of saying that Rupert was the person of all others from whom she would not only ask, but take, advice; because his judgment was so sound and he possessed a really well-balanced mind. This opinion of him had been endorsed by her late husband, who had only qualified it with one limitation.