“You know him, I see,” with emphasis.

Bluebell, recovering presence of mind, with a desperate effort, replied calmly,—­“There was a Mr. Dutton, who came home in the same steamer.  Probably I may have heard him whistling the air.”—­then sat down, and plunged into an instrumental piece, feeling quite unequal to endure further questioning.

But the notes all the time seemed incessantly repeating, “So this is the Cousin Kate he was always talking about."’

Miss Barrington’s mind was equally busy.

“I bet Harry flirted with her all the way across, and he never told me a word of it—­never so much as mentioned that there was a pretty girl in the ship, and yet she admitted knowing his favourite air ‘so well.’”

Then Kate remembered the many unaccounted for weeks between his landing in England and arrival at “The Towers,” and her former suspicion that some love affair had intervened.

At first she had only been provoked to curiosity by Bluebell’s reserve, but now there really was food for imagination to work on, and perhaps the clue to much that was perplexing in Harry.  How curiously it had come out!

The artless Kate smiled re-assuringly at her victim.  She was on the track now, and the rabbit might have as much chance of ultimately evading the weasel hunting him by scent.

“What perverse fate has brought me here?” sighed Bluebell, laying her tormented head on the pillow that night.  “Miss Barrington will be sure to find out everything.  She was so friendly at first; but Harry always said he never trusted her.  Then those children!  I am sure they are more capable of teaching me.  Whenever shall I be extricated from this false position?”

A night’s rest did not allay Bluebell’s perplexities; on the contrary, more and more complications suggested themselves.  Harry must know where she was by this time, and would be frantic at her having dropped into such an ants’-nest.  They would recognise his handwriting, too, if a letter came.  To be sure that would also strike him.  Nevertheless she got into the habit of calling for her letters at the post-office,—­a proceeding which the children did not fail to mention, with the rider, “That they wondered at Miss Leigh taking the trouble when she never got any.”

Kate was rather inclined to patronize Bluebell.  She persuaded her mother to give a musical party for the exhibition of her wonderful voice, and was, on that occasion, quite as solicitous about the young artiste’s toilette as her own; and, being not averse to having a girl of her own age to chatter to, bestowed a good deal of her society on Bluebell out of school-hours, which might have been more appreciated were it not for the excessive caution it entailed on the latter.

One day she heard that Mrs. and Miss Barrington were going to Bromley Towers for some theatricals and other gaieties.  After her discovery of whose house she was in, that was only a matter of course, and she had only to conceal all interest in it.