.
if he had dared. Hilda flushed painfully.
“It does seem a shame, Sir Arthur,” she said.
“It is honoured by your wearing it,” he remarked with a glance that made her eyes droop. “Now I must get something for Mavis and Dorothy.”
He moved forward. Hilda turned to Gregory.
“It is a lovely flower, and I am sure it must have given you a great deal of trouble to grow,” she said with a pretty, courteous smile. “I wish you could tell me—”
Sir Arthur, busy among his cattleyas, did not catch the rest of the sentence. His thoughts were occupied with Hilda. How lovely she had looked in her confusion just now, her long light cloak throwing up her brilliant colouring as she bent over the white flower! When he turned round Gregory was standing close to the girl, drawing forward a scarlet orchid of Japan.
“You must!”
Sir Arthur looked up quickly. Gregory’s back was to him, but he could see that Hilda’s eyes were fixed on the man’s face, her red lips were parted. Surely it could not have been to her that Gregory was speaking in that low, brusque tone.
As the young man hesitated her face broke into smiles.
“I am afraid it would be impossible,” she said, “I do not think I should ever have patience. Gregory is giving me some instructions in orchid-growing, Sir Arthur. I am afraid he does not find me an apt pupil.”
“I shall be very pleased to tell you anything that you want to know,” Sir Arthur remarked. “What were you explaining, Gregory?”
“I was just telling the young lady that the Rhenanthera—”
With a little cry Hilda interrupted him:
“Oh, Sir Arthur, please do not make him go over it again—my poor brain gets quite bewildered with all those long names! For the future I shall be quite content to admire the flowers and leave the practical part to you clever people.”
“That will do,” Sir Arthur said curtly to Gregory. “Mind the temperature does not get lowered at night. It has been cold in the evenings all last week.”
Outside he turned to Hilda.
“I could not hear very plainly, but was not that fellow speaking to you in an unwarrantably insolent tone?”
Hilda opened her eyes to their fullest extent.
“Oh, dear, no! Poor man, I think he was just a little disappointed about this,” laying her lips lightly to the blossom she was carrying. “I could not be surprised at that. After having watched it gradually coming into flower he must have felt sad when he saw it carried away. But what a nice, well-informed man he seems to be, Sir Arthur. I quite took a fancy to him.”
“He is very well in his place,” said Arthur, only half convinced. “But if I caught him—if I caught the best man about the place speaking disrespectfully to you, he should go at once.”
Chapter XI
“It is perfect, it seems to me.” Mavis glanced critically from her brother’s painting to Hilda’s flushed face. “You have caught just the pale cream tint of the complexion and that lovely hair. Oh, Hilda! I do envy you! Are you not proud of it? But you look pale this morning. What is the matter, dear?”
“I—it is only—” Hilda began, then her full underlip quivered, her eyes filled, and to the consternation of both brother and sister she burst into an agony of tears.
Mavis put her arms round her.
“What is the matter, Hilda? Has anybody vexed you? Tell me what is wrong with you.”
Sir Arthur left his painting and came over to his sister, “I have over-tired her, that is what it must be; in my selfishness I have been thinking only of my picture. Haven’t you got smelling-salts or something to give her, Mavis? Shall I get her some wine?”
Mavis, still bending over the weeping girl, shook her head decidedly. “I don’t think it is that. I think something is vexing her. Can’t you tell me what it is, dear?” stroking the girl’s ruffled golden hair.
“Perhaps it would be better if you left us a while, Arthur; I dare say she will tell me all about it when we are alone.”
Hilda sat and put out her hands.
“No, no, it is only that I am stupid; I know I ought not to bother you with my troubles. Please go on with your painting, Sir Arthur. I will try to be more sensible in the future.”
Mavis bent over her and kissed the hot cheeks.
“Can’t you tell us about it, dear? I often think when one has talked over a trouble, it seems less.”
“This is only—but I know you will say I ought to put it out of my mind, and I can’t do that. Besides, I am sure I am trouble enough to you all.”
“How can you—” Sir Arthur began impetuously.
Mavis hushed him with a look.
“I thought you knew that I love you, Hilda,” she said reproachfully. “You should not talk of trouble, dear. We look upon you as one of ourselves. Mother said yesterday that this must be your home until your own was found.”
“Ah, when will that be?” Hilda said. Her eyes, still wet, looked straight before her, her hands lay motionless in her lap, her lips were still quivering. “What sort of a home will it be when it is found?” she added bitterly. “Sir Arthur, Mavis, have you heard that a friend of Nurse Marston’s was in the village last week and she said she had had a letter from her, written the night she—she disappeared?”
Mavis looked amazed.
“How in the world did you hear that? Mother told all the servants they were not to mention it to you. One of them must have disobeyed her. Who was it, Hilda? If Minnie—”
Hilda caught the girl’s hand and laid it against her cheek.
“I can’t tell you how I heard it, Mavis—I promised not to, dear. It really does not matter—a thing like that was sure to come to my ears sooner or later. But I am answered—it is true, then?”
“It is true she had a letter—” Mavis began, looking at her brother perplexedly.
“To be correct, it is true that she said she had had a letter from Nurse Marston, written that night,’’ Arthur interposed, “but the letter itself she said she did not keep, so that we only have her word for it.”
“Still,” Mavis said, “Superintendent Stokes told Garth that he had made inquiries and Nurse Marston did have a letter posted, Arthur, and this Nurse Gidden bears a very high character too, he said. I don’t think there is any reason to doubt her.”
“Oh, dear, no! I didn’t mean to throw any aspersion on her character or general credibility,” Sir Arthur observed as he went back to the easel. “From all I hear she seems to be a most exemplary woman; but what I mean to say is that when a person cannot produce a letter, has lost or destroyed it, one cannot exactly take that person’s account of what was written in the said letter as if it were gospel truth, especially in a case like this, when her first impression would doubtless be coloured by what she had heard later on.”
A faint smile curved Hilda’s lips, though her eyes looked wistful and troubled.
“I think, Sir Arthur, that tells me what I wanted to know. This Nurse Gidden says that Nurse Marston recognized me, does she not, and implies that it was something discreditable that she knew about me?”
“Oh, no, no!” Mavis said quickly. “All Nurse Giddens said was that Nurse Marston said that no one knew who you were, and that she had seen you in circumstances which she