"A girl who might be wanting a post," Cicely exclaimed mockingly; "the person I engage for Baba, would have to be somebody much less vague than that, and she must have unimpeachable references." "Unimpeachable references," Mernside reflected as he left his cousin's house; and, side by side with Cicely's words, other words tossed to and fro in his brain, words written in a clear, girlish hand that had an odd character of its own. "I cannot find work, and I need a home very much." "Probably she is quite impossible," his reflections ran on. "Cicely had a good deal of right on her side when she talked about shop girls and matrimonial advertisements. I daresay I shall find C.M. belongs to that class of girl, and if so, what am I going to do about her? Ah! well; Margaret will help." It was this thought that buoyed him up during his walk across the park from the Redesdale's mansion in Eaton Square, to the small white house in Bayswater; but as he pushed open the familiar gate and walked up the garden path, a shock of surprise awaited him. The blinds of the room to the right of the front door were pulled down, and his repeated ringing of the bell brought no response from within. The bell clanged in the kitchen regions, its echoes dying away forlornly, but no footstep sounded in the hall, no hand lifted the latch of the door, and as he stepped back and looked up at the house, Rupert saw that no smoke was coming from the chimneys. A sick fear smote at his heart. What had happened? What could have happened? The day before, he had been here, sitting with Margaret in that very room over whose windows the blinds were now so closely drawn. She had seemed tired, it was true, but not more tired than he had often seen her, and he had no reason to suppose that she was more ill than usual. She was always fragile; he was accustomed to find her one week on the sofa, another week sufficiently strong to be moving about the room, and even going out of doors. But that her house should be barred and bolted against him was inexplicable. He felt as though the ground had been cut away from under his feet, as if the very foundations of his life had been shaken. Why! to-day was the day she had herself fixed for his interview in her house with the girl of the advertisement. Margaret had arranged the hour; it was by her suggestion that he had written to C.M., proposing a meeting at 100, Barford Road, and now he found the house locked up and apparently empty, with no word of explanation or apology. Could Margaret have been suddenly taken ill? If so, why had she not let him know? Yet, if she was ill, she would be in the house, and Elizabeth with her. Somebody would have answered his ringing, which had grown more and more imperative as each ring remained unanswered. Could she have gone away? Gone away without letting him have the slightest hint of her intended going? Was that more conceivable than his theory of