She drew up the hood of her cloak and nodded to him gayly.  Miss Garth, standing near, noticed the looks that passed between them, though the disturbance made by the parting guests prevented her from hearing the words.  There was a soft, underlying tenderness in Magdalen’s assumed gayety of manner—­there was a sudden thoughtfulness in her face, a confidential readiness in her hand, as she took Frank’s arm and went out to the carriage.  What did it mean?  Had her passing interest in him as her stage-pupil treacherously sown the seeds of any deeper interest in him, as a man?  Had the idle theatrical scheme, now that it was all over, graver results to answer for than a mischievous waste of time?

The lines on Miss Garth’s face deepened and hardened:  she stood lost among the fluttering crowd around her.  Norah’s warning words, addressed to Mrs. Vanstone in the garden, recurred to her memory—­and now, for the first time, the idea dawned on her that Norah had seen the consequences in their true light.

CHAPTER VII.

EARLY the next morning Miss Garth and Norah met in the garden and spoke together privately.  The only noticeable result of the interview, when they presented themselves at the breakfast-table, appeared in the marked silence which they both maintained on the topic of the theatrical performance.  Mrs. Vanstone was entirely indebted to her husband and to her youngest daughter for all that she heard of the evening’s entertainment.  The governess and the elder daughter had evidently determined on letting the subject drop.

After breakfast was over Magdalen proved to be missing, when the ladies assembled as usual in the morning-room.  Her habits were so little regular that Mrs. Vanstone felt neither surprise nor uneasiness at her absence.  Miss Garth and Norah looked at one another significantly, and waited in silence.  Two hours passed—­and there were no signs of Magdalen.  Norah rose, as the clock struck twelve, and quietly left the room to look for her.

She was not upstairs dusting her jewelry and disarranging her dresses.  She was not in the conservatory, not in the flower-garden; not in the kitchen teasing the cook; not in the yard playing with the dogs.  Had she, by any chance, gone out with her father?  Mr. Vanstone had announced his intention, at the breakfast-table, of paying a morning visit to his old ally, Mr. Clare, and of rousing the philosopher’s sarcastic indignation by an account of the dramatic performance.  None of the other ladies at Combe-Raven ever ventured themselves inside the cottage.  But Magdalen was reckless enough for anything—­and Magdalen might have gone there.  As the idea occurred to her, Norah entered the shrubbery.