Supper came to an end. Pauline asked wildly, her bright eyes gleaming, when the grand game of hide-and-seek in the moonlit garden was to begin. Here Penelope's fortitude failed her. "I have had a tiring day," she said. "Do you mind, Nora, if I go to my room?" "Is your head aching badly?" asked Honora. "Yes, I'm afraid it is." "Then of course you must go. And, children, we won't shout too loudly under Pen's window. Good-night, dear. Would you like me to come and see you before I go to bed myself?" "Oh, no, please; not to-night, Nora." "Very well--good-night. You really don't look at all well." Penelope felt a brief sense of relief when she was all alone in her room. She took off her dress and put on a light dressing-gown. Then she flung the window wide open and sat down by it, resting her elbow on the deep window ledge. Her pale, despairing face gazed out into the night. How happy she had been at Castle Beverley! What a joyful, glad, delightful sort of place it was! How merry the voices of the children sounded! She could hear shrieks of mirth in the distance. Oh, yes; Castle Beverley was a delightful home. She knew quite well why. It seemed to her that night that the whole secret of its gladness, of its goodness, of its beauty, was revealed. Castle Beverley was delightful, not because its owner was a rich man and well born; not because the children who came there were ladies and gentlemen by birth; but simply because the laws that governed that household were the laws of truth and love and unselfishness and righteousness. It was impossible to be mean in that home, for here the highest things were practised more than preached. There were no ostensible lessons in religion, but the religious life was led here, by Honora, by all the children, and, most of all, by the father and mother. "That accounts for it," thought Penelope. "It is because they are so good without being priggishly good, that I have been so happy. They always think nice thoughts of every one; and they are unselfish, and each gives up to the other. I don't belong to them--I belong to Brenda. Brenda and I have the same mother, and the same father. We are two sisters. Brenda has fallen very low indeed, and I suppose I shall fall too; for how can I endure, even for a moment, what Mademoiselle contemplates doing--what Mademoiselle will do? It will mean Brenda's ruin, Brenda's public disgrace, and my disgrace! Oh, to think that I should be living here, and that the children--Nellie and Pauline--should love me, and confide in me, and all the time my sister--mine! has stolen Nellie's bangle! Oh, Brenda, Brenda!" Poor Penelope did not cry: she was past tears. She sat and gazed out into the night. Her perplexities were extreme; she could not rest. What was she to do? Mademoiselle had put her, indeed, into a cleft stick; whichever way she turned there seemed to be nothing but despair.