When they were left alone Percival stepped forward. "What is it?" he said. "You will tell me now." She answered with averted eyes: "You know that our school broke up yesterday? Emmeline Nash went away by the nine-o'clock train, but she has never gone home." "Has never gone home!" Percival repeated. "That is very strange. She must have met with some accident." There was no answer. "It may not be anything serious: surely, you are distressing yourself too much." Judith looked up into his face with questioning eyes. "Or perhaps it is some school-girl freak," Thorne went on. "Naturally, Miss Crawford must be very anxious, but don't make up your mind to the worst till you know for certain." Still that anxious questioning look, as if she would read his very soul. Percival was startled and perplexed, and his eyes made no response. The girl turned away with a faint cry of impatience and despair: "And I am his own sister!" Percival stood for a moment thunder-struck. Then "Bertie?" he said. "But you did not think of him till I spoke," she answered passionately. "It was my doing--mine!" "Where is Bertie?" Thorne asked the question with something of her fear in his eyes. "I don't know. I had that yesterday morning." He took a pencilled scrap of paper from her hand. Bertie had written, "I find I cannot be back this afternoon, probably not till to-morrow. Don't expect me till you see me, and don't be anxious about me. All right.--Your H.L." "How did you get this?" he asked, turning it uneasily in his fingers. "A boy brought it from the station not half an hour after he went." Percival was silent. A sudden certainty had sprung up in his mind, and it made any attempt at reassuring her little better than a lie. Yet he felt as if his certainty were altogether unfounded. He could assign no reason for it. The truth was, that Bertie himself was the reason, and Percival knew him better than he had supposed. "Mr. Thorne," said Judith, "don't you hate me for what I've said? Surely you must. Miss Crawford doesn't dream that Bertie has anything to do with this. And you didn't, for I watched your eyes: you never would have thought of him but for me. It is I, his own sister, who have hinted it. He has nobody but me, and when his back is turned I accuse him of being so base, so cruel, so mercenary, that--" She stopped and tried to steady her voice. Suddenly she turned and pointed to the door: "And if he came in there now, this minute--oh, Bertie, my Bertie, if you _would_!--if he stood there now, I should have slandered him without a shadow of proof. Oh, it is odious, horrible! The one in all the world who should have clung to him and believed in him, and I have thought this of him! Say it is horrible, unnatural--reproach me--leave me! Oh, my God! you can't."