It was only with a half comprehension--so stunned was she--that Peggy had read Prue's missive; but at the end of Freddy's the dreadful white light of full understanding breaks upon her soul. Prue has gone to Oxford!--gone to fulfil young Ducane's aspiration--to 'lay her little cold hand on his throbbing brow.' Can it be possible? Can even Prue's madness have gone so far? She snatches up her sister's note again, and greedily reads it afresh, in the wild hope of finding that she has mistaken its drift. Alas! there is no room for misapprehension. If she need further confirmation of her worst fears it comes in the voice of Sarah, who looks in, duster in hand, through the half-open door. 'Please, 'm, did you want Miss Prue? She has gone out.' 'Gone out!' repeats Margaret breathlessly. Then, making a great effort over herself for composure, she adds, 'Yes, yes, I know; how did she go? did she walk or drive?' 'She went in the pony-carriage, 'm.' 'Did she take Alfred with her?' 'No, 'm; she said she should not want him.' 'And how--how long ago did she set off?' 'Indeed, 'm, I did not much notice. I happened to look out of the passage window as I was dusting the stairs, and I saw her drive off; it must be the best part of an hour ago.' _The best part of an hour ago!_ Like lightning it dawns upon Peggy that a train leaves her station for Oxford at ten minutes to eleven. It is a slow one, as all must be which draw up at the little wayside platform; not so slow, however, but that a crawl of a hundred and twenty minutes will land Prue as hopelessly beyond her power of reach as if it were the 'Flying Dutchman' itself, at Oxford station. She is as little able to hinder her sister from forcing her mad way into the young man's room as she would be to stop God's lightning from splitting the tree it is appointed to rend. With a gesture of rage and despair she dashes Freddy's note to the ground, and flings her own head down on the open blotting-book whose pages keep the imprint, scarcely dry, of her sister's insane words. But in a few minutes she has pulled herself together. There is only one thing for her to do--to follow and overtake her sister as quickly as possible. _As quickly as possible!_ But how quickly is that? This is the first thing to be discovered. She goes down into the cheerful hall, where the birds in their big cage are swinging on John Talbot's ladder, and chattering to each other as jovially as if no disaster had fallen on their roof-tree; where Mink is lying on his small hairy side in a sun-patch, with his little paws crossed like a dying saint's. Margaret searches for the _Bradshaw_, which apparently Sarah has tidied away. Her first impulse is to call to her, and ask where she has put it; but her second corrects it. Why should the household learn any sooner than is unavoidable that Prue has fled?