“Daddy,” she whispered, and there was a tiny, wistful smile on the fascinating mouth. “I’m not an Irish Fusilier, but, perhaps, I’m the-next-best-thing.” Then she went quietly back to bed, with her mind made up. But the next morning, it was only by a great physical and mental effort that she was able to appear at all like herself at the breakfast-table, and when the meal was finished she was glad to slip away unobserved. Eileen’s suspicions, however, had been previously roused in the night by a light step in the passage, and, afterward, a dim figure crossing the garden. She was tactful enough to say nothing of this, but at the same time determined to try and find out if anything was wrong, and how she could help. In this Paddy had cause to be grateful, because her plans could scarcely he carried out without Eileen’s help. When her sister sought her upstairs, and asked in a quiet, firm way, “What is the matter, Paddy? Something has happened to you,” she only hesitated a second, and then replied with as much calmness as she could muster: “Yes, Eily, I’m in rather a difficulty. I was going to ask you and Jack to help me.” “Paddy, we will do anything—anything,” Eileen cried earnestly. “I know you will, but it isn’t much I want—only that I am going back to London to-night, and I want you to help me manage it without any more questions and explanations than can possibly be helped.” At first, Eileen was dumbfounded and greatly distressed, but Paddy was evidently desperately in earnest and meant to go. “Don’t ask me anything, Eily, if you really want to help,” she said wearily. “Just break it to mother and the aunties a little while before I start and help to arrange some excuse for me to any others who ask questions.” In the end it was all managed so, and Jack prepared to go to Greenore with her and see her safely on the boat for Holyhead, from whence she would go straight back to her uncle’s. At the last moment Aunt Jane stole softly into her bedroom—Aunt Jane, whose heart had always leaned to Paddy, just as Aunt Mary’s had leaned to Eileen. “My child,” she said very tenderly, “I can see that you are in some great trouble, and I shall not know how to keep from fretting about you, because you have always been as my own child to me, and I would rather suffer myself than see you suffer. Only we may not choose who shall be glad and who sad, and no doubt if we could, things would only be worse in the end. But you won’t forget your ‘old maid’ auntie by the loch, darling, whose heart will ache silently, thinking of you day and night.” The tears gushed from Paddy’s eyes, and for a moment she seemed about to break down altogether, but in a few minutes she had managed to pull herself together again. “Are you sure you must go away alone like this?” Aunt Jane asked yearningly. “Yes, auntie, quite sure. I love you so much for coming to me now, but you mustn’t make me break down. Please help me to keep up, auntie, just until I get away.”