I clenched one of my hands tightly together. It was with the utmost difficulty that I could keep down the wild words which were crowding to my lips. But Aunt Penelope, whatever she told me, however awful and cruel her words were, must be looked after, must be tended, must be cared for. Crushing down that defiant, that worldly self which clamoured to assert itself, I followed the boy into the kitchen. I looked up an old receipt book and gave him swift directions. "You will have dinner all ready," I said, "and if by any chance I am out--if I haven't come in, you will not wait for me, for Aunt Penelope must have her dinner to the minute. You understand, don't you, Jonas?" "Oh, yes, Miss Heather. Yes, I understand; but"--he looked at me longingly--"there's the telegraphic message, miss," he said. "Oh, you mean that my father is coming. I'll be back in time to see him. It's all right, Jonas. Don't tell Aunt Penelope that I am out. Take her this soup, when it is ready, and, for Heaven's sake! don't keep me now." Jonas's round eyes became full of wonder, but I would not glance at them. I must get out. I must go up on the heights above the little town before my father arrived. I must be by myself, whatever happened; I must be quite alone. It was a hot day. Summer was coming on in great strides. In Aunt Penelope's village the weather was very hot in the summer time. But the air was more or less my native air. I was glad of it. I was glad to feel its soft zephyrs blowing against my cheeks. I soon reached the high part of the town, and then I found myself on the moors. I sat down on a clump of purple heather--the flower after which I was called--and pulled a spray of the blossom and crumpled it between my fingers and watched the little delicate flowers tumbling into my lap. All my life seemed to rise up before me at that moment, and the anguish that I lived through could scarcely be surpassed. Oh, Aunt Penelope, Aunt Penelope! What a dreadful thing you did when you told me that story about my father! Why did you, who kept it to yourself all your days, tell it to me now? Oh, it was not true! I did not believe it! Long ago, on the very day when I, a little, shy, frightened girl of eight years of age, had come to live with Aunt Penelope, the then reigning Jonas--the "Buttons" in possession--had taken me to these very heights and had walked over them with me and shown me the blue of the sea and the beauty of the landscape; and I had been excited, and pleased as a child will be, particularly such a child as I was--a child with a natural and intense love of nature in her heart.