But Maud turned away with a little shake of the head. The mere idea of food was distasteful to her. She asked where her mother was. Martin was about to answer that his mistress was upstairs with Miss Joan and Miss Nancy, when the sound of footsteps coming at racing speed up the drive was heard, and the next moment Geoffrey dashed breathless and hatless into the house. "I say," he panted out as soon as he could speak, "it's all right. It wasn't Miss Anstruther who fell over the cliffs. It was somebody else altogether. A visitor at one of the hotels, they say. Poor thing, she has been terribly injured, and won't live till the morning, I believe. But the point is that it wasn't Miss Anstruther. Where are Hilary and poor Miss Carson? I must tell them at once." He broke away from Maud, who would have detained him with a dozen eager questions, and burst into the drawing-room, shouting out his good news as he went. Hilary, who was still crying--she had cried steadily for over two hours--received his news with a scream of joy, but though Eleanor heard it much more quietly, no one looking at her could fail to see how deeply she was moved to thankfulness. The Danvers could only dimly realise how great her suffering had been during the last two hours, ever since Geoffrey had returned from the downs and in an awestruck tone, and with halting, stammering speech had broken to them all the news of the catastrophe which had, so he then thought, overtaken Margaret. Hilary had at once broken out into the noisy grief and passionate self-reproaches which she had kept up without intermission ever since, but Eleanor's agony of mind had lain too deep for outward expression. She knew that if Margaret had really been killed, she would never have been able to forgive herself. The awful thought that it was she who was responsible for her death would never have left her, and now that the strain of those terrible hours was over, Eleanor could only look back upon the utter blackness of despair that had been hers through every minute of them with a shudder. Then Mrs. Danvers who had been upstairs with her two nieces, for Joan had had an attack of crying only second in intensity to that to which Hilary had given way, informed by Martin of the good news which Geoffrey had brought, came down, followed by Nancy and Joan in their dressing-gowns, to share in the general rejoicing, and presently Mr. Anstruther returned, having been driven up in a motor by one of the doctors who had been at the hospital. And Mr. Anstruther's harshness and anger against his erring granddaughter was now a thing of the past. Though he had given scarcely more outward sign of his inward feelings than Eleanor, the tragic fate that he had believed to have overtaken Margaret had so appalled and shaken him that the escapade of which she had been guilty had sunk to but insignificant proportions in his eyes, and had she only returned now he would have uttered no word of blame to her.