"Very good, Miss; for Windy Gap, aren't you? The omnibus is waiting outside for your luggage, and Mrs. Murray has drove down to meet you." Eleanor stepped out on to the platform feeling that the Rubicon was now crossed and that there was no drawing back for either of them. She lingered for a moment beside the door, which Margaret had very promptly shut upon her the moment she was out of the carriage. "Don't be nervous," Margaret whispered encouragingly from the safe seclusion of her corner. "I am not." "Of course you're not!" Eleanor retorted. "You haven't begun to play the impostor yet. I have, and I am not sure that I like it. Your turn to be nervous will come when you get to Seabourne. Well," pulling herself together as the porter came within earshot, "good-bye to you, Miss Carson, so glad to have met you. I hope your holidays will be very pleasant ones." "I hope so too," said Margaret, with a little happy laugh of pure excitement. "Goodbye, Miss Anstruther, I hope you will get on nicely with all your lessons." For some reason the train was late in starting on again, and Margaret was therefore able to see the meeting between Mrs. Murray and Eleanor, although she was not near enough to overhear what was said on either side. When Eleanor had given up her ticket and passed through the gate, she saw Mrs. Murray, who had not got out of the pony-carriage, lean forward and, taking hold of Eleanor's two hands, draw her under the shade of the enormous mushroom hat and kiss her affectionately. The hat got somewhat disarranged in the process, and Mrs. Murray righted it with a pleasant low laugh that came distinctly to Margaret's ears as she sat watching the little scene from the corner of the third-class carriage. Then she seemed to be asking Eleanor some questions, which the latter answered readily through the ear-trumpet which Mrs. Murray held out to her. Once they looked in her direction, and a spasm of alarm shot through Margaret's mind. Surely, surely Eleanor was not abandoning their conspiracy at the very outset of its career. The trunk had already been hoisted on to the top of the somewhat dilapidated looking old bus that evidently plied between the distant village of Windy Gap and the station. Why, then, did the pony-carriage not drive on, or why did the train not start? Eleanor looked again towards the carriage in which Margaret sat in a perfect fever of impatience to be off, and then, after saying something to Mrs. Murray, to which the latter gave an affirmative nod, she left the carriage and came running up the platform. Margaret could have cried with disappointment. She had no doubt at all that Eleanor had already repented of her scheme, and was coming to say that it must be given up. Eleanor reached the door in a somewhat breathless condition, and Margaret resisting her first impulse to shut the window and to draw down the blind, and refuse to listen to a word she was going to say, put her head reluctantly out.