On the instant a lovely flush suffused Ethel’s cheeks, which was not mitigated by the fact that Miss Blair was looking at her with parted lips and eagerly anxious eyes. She felt indignant with herself at having been surprised into a display of so much emotion and perhaps a little indignant with her questioner. She had not failed to notice that Miss Blair employed the word “person” in her mention of Keymer. “The gentleman you speak of is my friend,” she replied with a touch of hauteur, “although I am at a loss to know in what way that fact concerns you, or why——” “I have presumed to come here and question you about him. That you will learn presently. Mr. Launce Keymer being, as you say, your friend, did he ever take you so far into his confidence as to tell you that he had engaged himself by a solemn promise to marry someone else?” The colour vanished from Ethel’s face, leaving it of a deathlike pallor. There was a little space of silence which to both the girls was fraught with pain. Then Ethel said faintly: “No, Mr. Keymer never told me that.” “I thought not,” answered Hetty, quietly. “Miss Thursby, I am the someone—I, humble Hetty Blair, nursery governess, whom Launce Keymer promised to make his wife.” “I cannot believe it,” came from Ethel, but her words lacked the accent of conviction. “It _is_ hard to believe, is it not, that any man should be such a villain? But, for all that, it’s the simple truth, as I can prove in a way which even you will find it impossible to dispute. If you will allow me, I will sit down, for the truth is I shake like an aspen.” “Pray pardon my forgetfulness,” said Ethel, and with that she seated herself on a sofa a little distance away. “I think he must have been fond of me at one time, or he would never have written me the letters he did,” resumed Hetty presently. Ethel’s eyes were fixed intently on her. She sat leaning a little forward, her hands with tightly interlocked fingers resting on her lap. At the word “letters” she could not repress a start. “Though I began to suspect latterly,” continued Hetty, “that he was no longer quite as fond of me as he used to be, I did not doubt his love, and, least of all, did I think he would behave to me as only a scoundrel could behave. I had a number of letters from him at different times—eight in all. He used to go over to Dulminster twice a week to see me. He knew where I kept the letters—in a little workbox which stood on the sideboard in my mother’s parlour where we used to sit together. Well, one afternoon, when he knew I was from home, he came to the house, and having sent my mother out on an errand, while she was gone, he broke open my workbox and stole my letters—that is to say, his letters to me; and from that day to this I have never set eyes on him, nor heard from him in any way. And the man who did that was Mr. Launce Keymer.”