AT ten o'clock the next morning Norah and Magdalen stood alone in the
hall at Combe-Raven watching the departure of the carriage which took
their father and mother to the London train.

Up to the last moment, both the sisters had hoped for some explanation
of that mysterious "family business" to which Mrs. Vanstone had so
briefly alluded on the previous day. No such explanation had been
offered. Even the agitation of the leave-taking, under circumstances
entirely new in the home experience of the parents and children, had
not shaken the resolute discretion of Mr. and Mrs. Vanstone. They had
gone--with the warmest testimonies of affection, with farewell embraces
fervently reiterated again and again--but without dropping one word,
from first to last, of the nature of their errand.

As the grating sound of the carriage-wheels ceased suddenly at a turn in
the road, the sisters looked one another in the face; each feeling,
and each betraying in her own way, the dreary sense that she was openly
excluded, for the first time, from the confidence of her parents.
Norah's customary reserve strengthened into sullen silence--she sat down
in one of the hall chairs and looked out frowningly through the open
house door. Magdalen, as usual when her temper was ruffled, expressed
her dissatisfaction in the plainest terms. "I don't care who knows it--I
think we are both of us shamefully ill-used!" With those words, the
young lady followed her sister's example by seating herself on a hall
chair and looking aimlessly out through the open house door.

Almost at the same moment Miss Garth entered the hall from the
morning-room. Her quick observation showed her the necessity for
interfering to some practical purpose; and her ready good sense at once