go and ring them up at Brookfield. I don't think there
will be much eloping done to-night, so farewell.'

XXVI

About ten o'clock on the night of Olive's elopement, Alice knocked
tremblingly at her mother's door.

'Mother,' she said, 'Olive is not in her room, nor yet in the house; I
have looked for her everywhere.'

'She is downstairs with her father in the studio,' said Mrs. Barton;
and, signing to her daughter to be silent, she led her out of hearing of
Barnes, who was folding and putting some dresses away in the wardrobe.

'I have been down to the studio,' Alice replied in a whisper.

'Then I am afraid she has run away with Captain Hibbert. But we shall
gain nothing by sending men out with lanterns and making a fuss; by this
time she is well on her way to Dublin. She might have done better than
Captain Hibbert, but she might also have done worse. She will write to
us in a few days to tell us that she is married, and to beg of us to
forgive her.'

And that night Mrs. Barton slept even more happily, with her mind more
completely at rest, than usual; whereas Alice, fevered with doubt and
apprehension, lay awake. At seven o'clock she was at her window,
watching the grey morning splinter into sunlight over the quiet fields.
Through the mist the gamekeeper came, and another man, carrying a woman
between them, and the suspicion that her sister might have been killed
in an agrarian outrage gripped her heart like an iron hand. She ran
downstairs, and, rushing across the gravel, opened the wicket-gate.
Olive was moaning with pain, but her moans were a sweet reassurance in
Alice's ears, and without attempting to understand the man's story of
how Miss Olive had sprained her ankle in crossing the stile in their
wood, and how he had found her as he was going his rounds, she gave the
man five shillings, thanked him, and sent him away. Barnes and the
butler then carried Olive upstairs, and in the midst of much confusion
Mr. Barton rode down the avenue in quest of Dr. Reed--galloped down the
avenue, his pale hair blowing in the breeze.

'I wish you had come straight to me,' said Mrs. Barton to Alice, as soon
as Barnes had left the room. 'We'd have got her upstairs between us, and
then we might have told any story we liked about her illness.'

'But the Lawlers' gamekeeper would know all about it.'

'Ah, yes, that's true. I never heard of anything so unfortunate in my
life. An elopement is never very respectable, b