Missy retreated a step from the verandah, stood still, and gasped. Then she pressed both hands to her left side. She was as one walking on the down line in order to avoid the up train, only to be cut to pieces by the down express, whose very existence she had forgotten.

Her eyes fastened themselves upon one object. Presently she found that it was Mrs. Teesdale's pebble brooch. Her ears rang with a harsh, shrill voice; it took her mind some moments to capture the words and grasp their meaning.

"You wicked, wicked, ungrateful woman! To dare to come here and pass yourself off as Miriam Oliver, and live with us all these weeks—you lying hussy! If you have anything to say for yourself be sharp and say it, then out you pack!"

The convicted girl now beheld the verandah swimming with people. As her sight cleared, however, she could only count four, including Mrs. Teesdale. There was the veritable Miss Oliver, but Missy took no note of her just then. There was Arabella, white and weeping; and there was Mr. Teesdale, looking years older since the morning, with the saddest expression Missy had ever seen upon human countenance. He was gazing, not at her, but down upon the ground at her feet. John William was not there at all. Missy looked about for him very wistfully, but in vain; and her glance ended, where it had begun, upon the furious face of Mrs. Teesdale. Furious as it was, the wretched girl found it much the easiest face to meet with a firm lip and a brazen front.

"Do you know that you could be sent to prison?" Mrs. Teesdale proceeded, still at a scream. "Ay, and I'll see that you are sent, and all!"

"Nay, come!" muttered Mr. Teesdale, shaking his head at the grass, but without looking at anybody.

Then suddenly he lifted his eyes, stepped down from the verandah, and went up to Missy.

"Missy," said he, in a low, hoarse voice, "Missy, I'll take your word as soon as the word of a person I've never set eyes on before. Is this true, or is it not? Are you, or are you not, Miriam Oliver, the daughter of my old friend?"

"It is true," said Missy. "I'm no more Miriam Oliver than you are."

Neither question nor answer had reached the ears of those in the verandah. But they saw David turn towards them with his head hanging lower than before, and he tottered as he rejoined them. Miss Oliver, however, may have guessed what had passed, for she smiled a supercilious smile which no one happened to observe. This young lady was a contrast to her impersonator in every imaginable way. She was not nearly so tall, and she had exceedingly fair hair. Her nose was tip-tilted to begin with, but she seemed to have a habit of turning it up even beyond the design of nature. This was perhaps justified on the present occasion. She was very fashionably dressed in a costume of extremely light gray; and in the dilapidated framework of the old verandah she was by far the most incongruous figure upon the scene.

"Has she anything to say for herself?" Mrs. Teesdale demanded of her husband. He shook his head despondently.

And then, at last, Missy opened her mouth.

"I have only this to say for myself. It isn't much, but Mr. Teesdale will tell you that it's the truth. It's only that I did do my level best to make a clean breast to him last night."

"She did!" exclaimed the old man, after a moment's rapid consideration. "Now I see what she meant. To think that I never saw then!"

"You were very dense," said Missy; "but not worse than John William. I did my best to tell you last night, and I did my best to tell him only this morning, but neither of you would understand."

As she spoke to the old man her voice was strangely gentle, and a smile was hovering about the corners of her mouth when she ceased. Moreover, her words had brought out a faint ray of light upon Mr. Teesdale's dejected mien.

"It's a fact!" he cried, turning to the others. "She did her best to confess last night. She did confess. I remember all about it now. It was a full confession, if only I'd put two and two together. But—well, I never could have believed it of her. That was it!"

He finished on a sufficiently reproachful note.

Nevertheless, Mrs. Teesdale turned upon him as fiercely as though he had spoken from a brief in Missy's defence.

"What if she had confessed? I'm ashamed of you, David, going on as though that could ha' made any difference! She'd still have deceived us and lied to us all these weeks. Black is black and this—this woman—is that black that God Himself couldn't whiten her!"

And Mrs. Teesdale shook her fist at the guilty girl.

"We have none of us a right to say that," murmured David.

"But I do say it, and I mean it, too. I say that she'd still have stolen Miriam's letter of introduction, and come here deliberately and passed herself off as Miriam, and slept under our roof, and eaten-our bread, under false pretences—false pretences as shall put her in prison if I have anything to do with it! No confession could have undone all that; and no confession shall keep her out of prison neither, not if I know it!"

Some of them were expecting Missy to take to her heels any moment; but she never showed the least sign of doing so.

"No, nothing can undo it," she said herself. "I've known that for some time, and I shan't be sorry to pay the cost."

Then the real Miss Oliver put in her word. It was winged with a sneer.

"It was hardly a compliment," she said, "to take her for me! You might ask her, by the way, when and where she stole my letters. I lost several." She could not permit herself to address the culprit direct.

"I'll tell you that," said Missy, "and everything else too, if you like to listen."

"Do, Missy!" cried Arabella, speaking also for the first time. "And then I'll tell them something."

"Be sharp, then," said Mrs. Teesdale. "We're not going to stand here much longer listening to the likes of you. If you've got much to say, you'd better keep it for the magistrate!"

Missy shook her head at Arabella, stared briefly but boldly at Mrs. Teesdale, and then addressed herself to the fair girl in gray, who raised her eyebrows at the liberty.

"You remember the morning after you landed in the Parramatta? It was a very hot day, about a couple of months ago, but in the forenoon you went for a walk with a lady friend. And you took the Fitzroy Gardens on your way."

Miss Oliver nodded, without thinking whom she was nodding to. This was because she had become very much interested all in a moment; the next, she regretted that nod, and set herself to listen with a fixed expression of disgust.

"You walked through the Fitzroy Gardens, you stopped to look at all the statues, and then you sat down on a seat. I saw you, because I was sitting on the next seat. You sat on that seat, and you took out some letters and read bits of them to your friend. I could hear your voices, but I couldn't hear what you were saying, and I didn't want to, either. I had my own things to think about, and they weren't very nice thinking, I can tell you! That hot morning, I remember, I was just wishing and praying to get out of Melbourne for good and all. And when I passed your seat after you'd left it, there were your letters lying under it on the gravel. I picked them up, and I looked up and down for you and your friend. You were out of sight, but I made for the entrance and waited for you there. Yes, I did—you may sneer as much as you like! But you never came, and when I went back to my lodgings I took your letters with me."

Still the young lady sneered without speaking, and Missy hardened her heart.

"I read them every one," she said defiantly. "I had nothing ............