retire there, lock the door, and sleep well till Betty comes."

"Oh, I can't! You are very kind, but I must go to Mrs. Jackson now."

She had blushed and paled in alternate seconds. Half rising, she sank back into the chair again; though the table was between them, the wearing of a boy's clothes was not quite so easy a matter as it had seemed earlier. The one thing she did not guess was that this serious-faced man was far more troubled by thoughts of a reputed ghost than by an escapade which now loomed large in her mind.

"I'm half inclined to make you obey me," he said angrily, gazing at her now with fixed and troubled eyes.

"But you've been so good and kind," she almost sobbed. "Why should you be vexed with me now? I've told you the truth, I have, indeed."

"That is precisely the reason why I am sure you ought not to risk arousing the village to-night."

"But I won't. I'll tap at the window. Betty knows I'm here, somewhere, and she'll let me in at once."

Armathwaite was at his wits end to decide on the sanest course. A man less versed than he in the complexities of life would have counseled her retreat to the cottage as the only practicable means of escape from a position bristling with difficulties; but some subtle and intuitive sense warned him that Marguérite Garth should, if possible, leave Elmdale without the knowledge which credited that house with a veritable ghost.

"It's long after midnight," he persisted. "I'll have a snooze in a chair, and meet Betty Jackson before you show up. You can trust me absolutely to explain things to her."

"You forget that she is worrying dreadfully about me. Please let me go!"

"Very well," he said, driven to the half measures he had learnt to detest. "Promise me this—that you'll go straight to bed, and come here for breakfast without any conversation with the Jacksons."

The girl showed her relief, not unmixed with surprise at a strangely-worded stipulation.

"I'll do that," she said, after a little pause.

"Mind you—no talk. Just 'Good-night, I'm dead tired,' and that sort of thing."

"Yes," she agreed again, wonderingly.

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