Marion lay in her bed, staring through the drawn curtains into the dark night. Her window was ajar, and sweet cool airs played fitfully in the room. It was past three o'clock; soon the summer dawn would break; cocks crowed faintly in the farmyards that dotted the fields beyond Kensington village.

To and fro Marion turned, chafing at the hotness of her bed, trying to find a cool space for her body and a spot on the pillow that might tempt her throbbing head to lie still. The only ease she could gain was by turning a certain way, her eyes on the quiet vagueness of the sky. She kept telling herself there was no cause for this turmoil of mind; time after time she turned her thoughts back to the ball, thinking of the dances, of a certain melody that had pleased her so that she had sent to the fiddlers to play it again—of the men and women whose language and manners, still unfamiliar, fascinated her and gave her the pleasant feeling of being at home in a strange land. But behind their faces she saw that of Charity; running with the strains of the minuet was a phrase she could not forget—'i be afeered, Mistress Marion, mightilie afeered, and moste of al for Master Roger.'

'Who is this Charity?' Lady Fairfax had asked after she herself, at Marion's request, had read the sprawled sheet. On learning the story of the girl, and hearing of the hostile feeling of Garth for the Admiral's ward, the first instinct of Lady Fairfax had been to take the part of her own class against another that was uneducated, prejudiced, and superstitious to a degree.

'You can't get away from what is in your blood,' argued the lady. 'Those Cornish fisherfolk are the children of countless generations that have spent themselves in enmity with the French: a continual cross-channel warfare. They first hate the Devon men, because they are not Cornish, and then they hate the French because they are not English. To their way of thinking the only people who have any excuse to be alive, or have any hope to enter heaven, are English folk who have been born and bred in Cornwall.'

Marion smiled faintly. 'True enough, Aunt Constance. But you don't know Elise.'

'I don't know Elise, my dear. There you are right. But I do know that Elise, the daughter of Monsieur de Delauret and the granddaughter of the old Vicomte d'Artois, is bred and born a gentlewoman. You cannot turn your back on your own class and take the peasant view against them. And has not Elise been your companion and playfellow all these years? Leave for a moment this present problem—a difficult one, I grant you—and consider Elise in the light of a ten years' friendship. What have you against her?

'Nothing,' said Marion falteringly. 'That is, until Aunt Keziah came and made me somehow see Elise in a different way. And—besides——'

'The "besides,"' smiled Lady Fairfax, 'is generally the root of the whole matter.'

Marion's cream and gold lace dress had been taken off, and a light dressing-gown thrown about her, and Lady Fairfax, similarly disrobed, was tending the long russet hair.

With her brush swish swish through the shining tresses, Lady Fairfax waited. 'And besides?'

In as few words as possible Marion told the story of Jack Poole's arrest, and Elise's vindictive remarks at supper.

'What did your father say?'

'He was angry. I never saw him angry with her before. It was not only unkind of Elise, but 'twas a most dangerous thing to say, as Father explained. You don't know one hundredth part of the horror of that rising in the West, Aunt Constance. If one of the servants had heard her, and there had chanced to be a countryman, a tinker or a packman, in the kitchens—and of course you know passing folk are always welcomed by the servants—Roger might have been hanged on the strength of that.'

The lady was silent a moment. 'Well, well,' she resumed, 'Roger was not hanged. But, my dear love, for a girl coming to womanhood you are strangely blind. Have you not told me before that this youth Roger could not abide Elise?'

'No more he could. Well?'

'Is not that a reason for Elise's hating Roger? A woman can forgive a man almost everything except disliking her, and showing it.'

'Elise is only a girl.'

'A rose-bud is all the same a rose.'

Marion twined a stray wisp of hair round and round her fingers. 'Granted all that, Aunt Constance, why should Elise be continually going down to Haunted Cove, and to see such a horrible man?'

'Who says she is going continually?'

'Well—Charity says everybody says so.'

'Which means,' said Lady Fairfax tartly, 'that some one may have seen her twice. You don't know the Cornish as well as I do.'

'I will not hear another word against my people, Aunt Constance. You have naught but unkindness for them.' Marion tossed her hair free, and sprang to her feet.

'La, la!' said Lady Fairfax. 'Am I not "your own people?" And therefore theirs? Oh, my precious baby, what an infant you are!' The speaker suddenly caught the girl in her arms and drew her to a low seat. Marion's head fell on her shoulder, and her tears dropped.

'I am so unhappy, Aunt Constance.'

'But, my darling, I assure you there is nothing to be unhappy about.'

There was a silence for a few minutes. Then Marion slipped from her aunt's arms to the hearthrug, and laid her head against her knee. 'I am too big a baby to be nursed, dear Aunt Constance. I shall tire you.'

'I was not complaining,' said the childless woman, letting her arms fall.

'But why should she have gone even once down to Haunted Cove to meet that man?' Marion resumed after a while.

'There, my dear, is a question I cannot answer. But until you know more about it, is it not only fair to give Elise the benefit of the doubt? And as for the words she said: "He shall pay for this," why—the girl was furious, and let out the words in her spleen that she would otherwise have withheld. People spit out queer things when they are angry. Anger and madness are closely akin.'

'And another thing,' resumed Lady Fairfax, stroking the bright head. 'Your father is a shrewd man. He will not have forgotten that speech of Elise's. If he thinks in sober judgment there is anything against the maid, he will be watching her. Sooner or later these tales will reach him. If that little Charity had been worth her salt, she would have gone to him, and not writ that hysterical letter to you.'

'She would not dare, I am afraid, to seek my father.'

'Because he would pull her ears for a gossiping busy-body. And don't you see, my dear, how foolish it is to think that Roger and your father can come to some mishap through the malice of your father's ward? Leave the men to take care of themselves. I declare I shall hate that Roger if the thought of some passing danger for him spoils your visit here.'

'I have known Roger ever since I could walk,' said Marion softly. 'He was brother and sister and playfellow.'

'You can't wrap him in silk shawls and set him in a drawing-room. He will have to play his part; and you can't either prevent it or take one jot or tittle from it. How long has this letter been in coming?'

Marion took up the sheet. 'Close on two weeks. It must have been sadly delayed.'

'Then everything must still be well. Your father would have written and sent a special messenger, otherwise. And now, m............