r and come out of the room.

Supper was rather a doleful meal, and immediately after it mademoiselle
went to look for her niece, who had not returned. Barbara laughed a
little scornfully at her fears, and even when she came back with the
news that Marie was not concealed next door, as she had thought,
refused to believe that the girl was not hiding somewhere else.

"But where could she be except next door?" mademoiselle questioned;
"and when I went to ask, Monsieur Dubois was seated with his sons
having supper, and no signs of the truant. He had seen or heard
nothing of her, he said."

Barbara wondered which had been deceived, and whether the widower
himself was deceived or deceiver, but, giving up the attempt to decide
the question, retired to bed, advising mademoiselle to do the same,
feeling some curiosity, but no anxiety, as to Marie's fate. She had
not been in bed very long when she heard some one move stealthily
downstairs and enter the dining-room. Mademoiselle Therese, she knew,
had locked all the doors and gone to her bedroom, which was in the
front of the house, and she immediately guessed that it must be
something to do with Marie.

"The plot thickens," she said to herself, stealing to the window, which
looked out upon the garden. There, to her amazement, she saw
Mademoiselle Loire emerging laboriously from the dining-room window.
She saw her in the moonlight creep down the garden towards the wall at
the end, but what happened after that she could only guess at, as the
trees cast a shadow which hid the lady from view.

"The lady or the tiger?" she said, laughing, as she peered into the
shades of the trees, and about five minutes later was rewarded by
seeing two figures hurry back and enter the house by the same way that
Mademoiselle Loire had got out.

"Marie!" she thought triumphantly, wondering in what part of the garden
she had been hidden, as there was no gate in the direction from which
she had come. She lay awake for a little while, meditating on the
vagaries of the family she had fallen into, and then fell so soundly
asleep that she was surprised to find it broad daylight when she awoke,
and to see Marie sitting on the end of her bed, smiling beamingly upon
her.

"So you're back?" Barbara inquired with a yawn. "I hope you didn't
find it too cold in the garden last night."

"You saw us, then?" giggled Marie. "But you don't know where I came
from, do you? Nor does Aunt Therese. I'll t