‘She has been very ill,’ said Mrs. Merrifield, ’and they wrote to her to come down as soon as she could move.  There was a telegram this morning, and she drove up in the midst of the party, and was taken to her room at once to rest.  That was the reason Miss Arthuret was away so long.  I thought it nice in her.’

‘Perhaps she will do good,’ said Bessie.

Dinner was just over, and the Admiral had settled down with his shaded lamp to read and judge of the article that Bessie had given him as a specimen, when in came the message, ’Mrs. Rudden wishes to speak to you, sir.’

Mrs. Rudden was the prosperous widow who continued the business in the village shop, conjointly with the little farm belonging to the Gap property.  She was a shrewd woman, had been able to do very well by her family, and was much esteemed, paying a rent which was a considerable item in the Gap means.  The ladies wondered together at the summons.  Susan hoped ‘that girl’ did not want to evict her, and Bessie suggested that a co-operative store was a more probable peril.  Presently the Admiral came back.  ’Do any of you know Miss Arthuret’s writing?’ he said.

‘Bessie knows it best,’ said Susan.

He showed a letter.  ‘That is hers—­the signature,’ said Bessie.  ’I are not sure about the rest.  Why—­what does it mean?’

For she read—­

’The Gap, 2D OCT.

’MRS. RUDDEN,—­You are requested to pay over to the bearer, Mr. Foxholm, fifty pounds of the rent you were about to bring me to-morrow.—­I remain, etc.,

‘ARTHURINE ARTHURET.’

‘What does it mean?’ asked Bessie again.  ’That’s just what Mrs. Rudden has come up to me to ask,’ said the Admiral.  ’This fellow presented it in her shop about a quarter of an hour ago.  The good woman smelt a rat.  What do you think she did?  She looked at it and him, asked him to wait a bit, whipped out at her back door, luckily met the policeman starting on his rounds, bade him have an eye to the customer in her shop, and came off to show it to me.  That young woman is demented enough for anything, and is quite capable of doing it—­for some absurd scheme.  But do you think it is hers, or a swindle?’

‘Didn’t she say she had given her autograph?’ exclaimed Susan.

‘And see here,’ said Bessie, ’her signature is at the top of the sheet of note-paper—­small paper.  And as she always writes very large, it would be easy to fill up the rest, changing the first side over.’

‘I must take it up to her at once,’ said the Admiral.  ’Even if it be genuine, she may just as well see that it is a queer thing to have done, and not exactly the way to treat her tenants.’

’It is strange too that this man should have known anything about Mrs. Rudden,’ said Mrs. Merrifield.

’Mrs. Rudden says she had a message this morning, when she had come up with her rent and accounts, to say that Miss Arthuret was very much engaged, and would be glad if she would come to-morrow!  Could this fellow have been about then?’