“You said in your first telegram that you would come for her yourself, and in your second that you were detained, and that your friend and her father’s friend, Mr. Lithgow, would call for her by the early train; so she went with _him_.” “My friend, Mr. Lithgow! I have no friend, Mr. lithgow,” cried Maitland; “and I sent no second telegram.” “Then who _did_ send it, sir, if you please? For I will show you both telegrams,” cried Miss Marlett, now on her defence; and rising, she left the room. While Miss Marlett was absent, in search of the telegrams, Maitland had time to reflect on the unaccountable change in the situation. What had become of Margaret? Who had any conceivable interest in removing her from school at the very moment of her father’s accidental death? And by what possible circumstances of accident or fraud could two messages from himself have arrived, when he was certain that he had only sent one? The records of somnambulism contain no story of a person who despatched telegrams while walking in his sleep. Then the notion occurred to Maitland that his original despatch, as he wrote it, might have been mislaid in the office, and that the imaginative clerk who lost it might have filled it up from memory, and, like the examinees in the poem, might “Have wrote it all by rote, And never wrote it right.” But the fluttering approach of such an hypothesis was dispersed by the recollection that Margaret had actually departed, and (what was worse) had gone off with “his friend, Mr. Lithgow.” Clearly, no amount of accident or mistake would account for the appearance of Mr. Lithgow, and the disappearance of Margaret. It was characteristic of Maitland that within himself he did not greatly blame the schoolmistress. He had so little human nature--as he admitted, on the evidence of his old college tutor--that he was never able to see things absolutely and entirely from the point of view of his own interests. His own personality was not elevated enough to command the whole field of human conduct. He was always making allowances for people, and never felt able to believe himself absolutely in the right, and everyone else absolutely in the wrong. Had he owned a more full-blooded life, he would probably have lost his temper, and “spoken his mind,” as the saying is, to poor Miss Marlett She certainly should never have let Margaret go with a stranger, on the authority even of a telegram from the girl’s guardian. It struck Maitland, finally, that Miss Marlett was very slow about finding the despatches. She had been absent quite a quarter of an hour. At last she returned, pale and trembling, with a telegraphic despatch in her hand, but not alone. She was accompanied by a blonde and agitated young lady, in whom Maitland, having seen her before, might have recognized Miss Janey Harman. But he had no memory for faces, and merely bowed vaguely.