What could she do, poor girl? She felt it was her duty. Who can tell if she erred? If so, it was on mercy's side. Next morning Lucy was herself again; she was once more the buoyant, merry girl, who smiled and chattered, and sang her little scraps of French songs, making the sunshine of the house. The _rôles_ were changed. Never again shall the light of perfect happiness beam in Georgie Haggard's once honest eyes--those eyes now red with weeping, full of the secret sorrow of her cousin's bitter confidence. It is always painful to an honourable mind to play the part of a conspirator, and that thankless _rôle_ was now forced upon poor Georgie--willy-nilly she had to do it. Lucy's fertile brain teemed with plan, with plot, with stratagem; certain of ultimately conquering the scruples of her gentle and loving cousin, she had evidently thought the matter out. "We ought to trust nobody, you know," said the younger girl, who had suddenly assumed the management of everything. Startled and horrified, Georgie had become in regard to her cousin, that born intriguer, but as clay in the hands of the potter. "No, we ought not to, but we must. If ever a girl in this world could keep her tongue between her teeth, it's that pale Hephzibah of ours, and trust her we must, there's nothing else for it." Lucy's tongue, once loosed, never seemed to tire. Her despondency and melancholy, her load of carking care, were all transferred as by the wave of a magician's wand to her cousin's shoulders. Alas! that cousin, that patient, loving cousin is perhaps destined to carry to her grave the fardel of another's weakness, the punishment of a worthless woman's fault. Georgie, from that hour, was a changed girl. No more the once happy, loving eyes gazed on the younger girl with more than a mother's pride. From that day Georgie feared her cousin, and Lucy soon detected the new sentiment which she had unexpectedly inspired. The younger dictated, the elder acquiesced. "Georgie," she once suddenly said, when they were alone together on the little platform which hung over the blue waters of the lake, "swear to me that you will never betray my secret." She clutched her cousin's hand with fierce insistance and stamped her little foot; "swear to me," she said in a hoarse whisper, "that never by word or letter you will reveal my secret--_our_ secret," she added with a smile. If ever a pretty woman's smile was devilish, Lucy Warrender's was, as she insisted on this partnership in her guilt. "Have I ever deceived you, Lucy, that you should want me to swear?" "But you shall swear, Georgie," she reiterated almost savagely. "I have gone too far to hesitate at trifles now, and if you don't, you will never see me more," she added menacingly, as she pointed to the lake. Her little figure seemed to increase in height, so sternly determined was her aspect. Georgie cowered in mingled anxiety and horror.