Miss Ingate shook her head, and put her lips tightly together, while mechanically smoothing the sides of her grey coat.

“I don’t know,” she said.  “It beats me.”

“Then I’ll tell you what I can do!” answered Audrey firmly, wriggling somewhat nearer to her along the floor.  “And what I shall do.”

“What?”

“Will you promise to keep it a secret?”

Miss Ingate nodded, smiling and showing her teeth.  Her broad polished forehead positively shone with kindly eagerness.

“Will you swear?”

Miss Ingate hesitated, and then nodded again.

“Then put your hand on my head and say, ‘I swear.’”

Miss Ingate obeyed.

“I shall leave this house,” said Audrey in a low voice.

“You won’t, Audrey!”

“I’ll eat my hand off if I’ve not left this house by to-morrow, anyway.”

“To-morrow!” Miss Ingate nearly screamed.  “Now, Audrey, do reflect.  Think what you are!”

Audrey bounded to her feet.

“That’s what father’s always saying,” she exploded angrily.  “He’s always telling me to examine myself.  The fact is, I know too much about myself.  I know exactly the kind of girl it is who’s going to leave this house.  Exactly!”

“Audrey, you frighten me.  Where are you going to?”

“London.”

“Oh!  That’s all right then.  I am relieved.  I thought perhaps you waited to come to my house.  You won’t get to London, because you haven’t any money.”

“Oh, yes, I have.  I’ve got a hundred pounds.”

“Where?”

“Remember, you’ve sworn....  Here!” she cried suddenly, and drawing her hand from behind her back she most sensationally displayed a crushed roll of bank-notes.

“And who did you get those from?”

“I didn’t get them from anybody.  I got them out of father’s safe.  They’re his reserve.  He keeps them right at the back of the left-hand drawer, and he’s so sure they’re there that he never looks for them.  He thinks he’s a perfect model, but really he’s careless.  There’s a duplicate key to the safe, you know, and he leaves it with a lot of other keys loose in his desk.  I expect he thought nobody would ever dream of guessing it was a key of the safe.  I know he never looked at this roll, because I’ve been opening the safe every day for weeks past, and the roll was always the same.  In fact, it was dusty.  Then to-day I decided to take it, and here you are!  He finished himself off yesterday, so far as I’m concerned, with the business about the punt.”

“But do you know you’re a thief, Audrey?” breathed Miss Ingate, extremely embarrassed, and for once somewhat staggered by the vagaries of human nature.

“You seem to forget, Miss Ingate,” said Audrey solemnly, “that Cousin Caroline left me a legacy of two hundred pounds last year, and that I’ve never seen a penny of it.  Father absolutely declined to let me have the tiniest bit of it.  Well, I’ve taken half.  He can keep the other half for his trouble.”