"Fancy Miss Exeter wearing someone else's beads!" said Edna in a tone hard to mistake for a friendly one. "But don't they look well on her?" said Antonia. "Uncle Tony, don't you think they look well on her? How could you describe her as 'of pleasing appearance'? It nearly made me miss her at the station that first day. I went dodging about, trying to find a pale, plain girl--that's what mother told me to look for. I think Miss Exeter is beautiful, don't you?" "Antonia!" said her mother scornfully, as if nonsense were being talked. Anthony, however, never allowed his niece to put him in a hole. "I certainly do," he said, and he looked straight at Pearl, and she looked straight at him and laughed and said, "You'd be a brave man to say no when Antonia takes that tone." "I should be worse than brave--I should be a liar," said Anthony. The sentiment, which brought a lovely beam from Pearl, brought him a dark glance from his sister. She thought it was not like Anthony to be silly about a woman, and then the encouraging idea occurred to her that he was luring her on in order to win her confidence--clever creature that he was. As soon as dinner was over the children rushed away to feed Horatius; and Edna, who felt the need of uninterrupted conversation with her brother, led him across the lawn to Miss Wellington's house. It was not easy, for he showed the same reluctance to go that people show toward leaving a wood fire on a cold day; but when Miss Exeter--who, of course, everyone knew wasn't Miss Exeter--said she had a letter to write he rose to his feet. "A letter?" he said, the idea being, of course, that now he was at home, there could be no more letters in the world. Pearl nodded. It really was important, for she had always promised Augusta to write her a full account of the first meeting with her respected employer; and, as a matter of fact, Pearl was bursting with eagerness to express her emotion to someone. If she wrote at once the letter could be posted that evening, when, about nine o'clock, a man came to deliver and receive mail. As Edna and her brother went out they passed Mr. Albertson on guard, and Edna conveyed the information to him that "she" had gone to write a letter. Albertson made a reassuring gesture and they passed on. Cora was all eagerness and cordiality. "And what has Anthony discovered about her?" were her first words--spoken to Edna, but directed toward him. Edna came nobly to his assistance, gave an account of the rescue of Horatius quite as if she thought it a natural, explainable incident, which she was really very far from thinking. "And what are his impressions?" said Cora.