“Oh, Mr. Heyford,” she cried at last. “I am so sorry you have told me this, for I don’t believe I can say yes, at least not now. Give me till to-morrow, and then if I find that I can be to you what your wife ought to be, I will.” Jack did not press her further, and when the croquet party came round from the lawn, they found Edna sitting there alone, and Mr. Heyford gone back to the Mountain House. That night, when Uncle Phil came from the post-office, he brought a letter from Aunt Jerry, enclosing one from Roy, who had written from a little inn among the Scottish hills. It was only a pleasant, friendly letter, telling of his journeyings and his mother’s health, which did not seem to improve; but it sealed Jack Heyford’s fate. Edna had no thought of ever marrying Roy, but she could not marry Jack, and she sat down to tell him so on paper, feeling that she could do it in this way with less of pain and embarrassment to them both. And as she wrote, Roy’s letter lay open beside her, and Maude came bounding up the stairs and stood at her side, almost before she knew that she was coming. With a quick motion she put Roy’s letter away, but not until Maude’s eyes had glanced at and recognized the handwriting. “Eureka,” she whispered softly; and then, to Edna’s utter astonishment, Maude knelt down beside her, and putting her arms around her neck, said to her: “Dotty, don’t be angry, will you? I always find out things, and you are Edna Churchill.” Edna felt as if she was suffocating. Her throat closed spasmodically, so that she could not speak, and for an instant she sat motionless, staring at Maude, who, frightened at the expression of her face, kissed her lips, and forehead, and cheek, and said: “Don’t take it so hard. Nobody shall know your secret from me; nobody, I assure you. I have guessed it ever so long. It was the _jet_ which brought it to me. Roy spoke of his sister once last winter, and said he had sent her some ornaments of jet, and then it flashed over me that my little Dotty was the girl in whom I had been so interested ever since I first heard of her. Speak to me, Dot. You are not offended?” “No,” Edna gasped at last. “Only it came so sudden. I am glad you know. I wanted you to know it, it seemed so like a miserable lie I was living all the time.”