how I dread
that, Mabyn!"

Mabyn's conscience was struck. She it was who had done this thing. She
had persuaded her father that her mother needed another week or
fortnight at Penzance; she had frightened him by telling what bother he
would suffer if Wenna were not back at the inn during the festivities at
Trelyon Hall; and then she had offered to go and take her sister's post.
George Rosewarne was heartily glad to exchange the one daughter for the
other. Mabyn was too independent; she thwarted him; sometimes she
insisted on his bestirring himself. Wenna, on the other hand, went about
the place like some invisible spirit of order, making everything
comfortable for him without noise or worry. He was easily led to issue
the necessary orders; and so it was that Mabyn thought she was doing her
sister a friendly turn by sending her back to Eglosilyan in order to
join in congratulating Harry Trelyon on his entrance into man's estate.
Now Mabyn found that she had only plunged her sister into deeper
trouble. What could be done to save her?

"Wenna," said Mabyn rather timidly, "do you think he has left Penzance?"

Wenna turned to her with a sudden look of entreaty in her face: "I
cannot bear to speak of him, Mabyn. I have no right to: I hope you will
not ask me. Just now I--I am going to write a letter--to Jamaica. I
shall tell the whole truth. It is for him to say what must happen now. I
have done him a great injury: I did not intend it, I had no thought of
it, but my own folly and thoughtlessness brought it about, and I have to
bear the penalty. I don't think he need be anxious about punishing me."

She turned away with a tired look on her face, and began to get out her
writing materials. Mabyn watched her for a moment or two in silence;
then she left and went to her own room, saying to herself, "Punishment!
Whoever talks of punishment will have to address himself to me."

When she got to her own room she wrote these words on a piece of paper
in her firm, bold, free hand: "A friend would like to see you for a
minute in front of the post-office in the middle of the town." She put
that in an envelope, and addressed the envelope to Harry Trelyon, Esq.
Still keeping her bonnet on, she went down stairs and had a little
general conversation with her mother, in the course of which she quite
casually asked the name of the hotel at which Mr. Trelyon had been
staying. Then, just as if she were going out to the Parade to have a
look