perhaps Jacinth had some private charities of her own in
prospect which she did not wish talked about. 'Give Miss Scarlett's
message to your aunt and sister, and good-bye till Monday morning.'

Frances ran off, much relieved in her mind.

'But I really must be careful how I talk,' she reflected sagely. 'I had
quite forgotten that I wasn't to chatter about Lady Myrtle--except to
Bessie and Margaret. Jacinth said I might really count them my friends,
and that means being able to tell them anything I like. Besides, how
could I have helped telling Margaret about Lady Myrtle, when she told me
all the story of her being their great-aunt?'

Her conscience nevertheless was not absolutely at rest, and joined to
her eagerness to tell her sister all she had heard of the Harpers'
family history was now a slight fear of Jacinth's considering her
indiscreet, and she was so preoccupied that, as she hurried out to the
hall, where Phebe was waiting, she almost ran against Bessie, who was
eagerly watching for her.

'Frances,' she said, 'I must speak to you a moment. I asked Miss Linley,
and she let me run in, and she said I might walk down to the gate with
you.' There was rather a long drive up to the door of Ivy Lodge.
'Listen, dear; it's this. I can't bear to ask you to keep anything a
secret from your aunt or your sister, but _sometimes_ secrets may be
right, if they concern other people and are not about anything in any
way wrong. And I don't see what else to do. It is this--would you mind
promising me not to tell _anybody_ about Lady Myrtle Goodacre being our
relation, till I have written home to mother and told her that you and
Jacinth know her, and about your grandmother having been her dear
friend? I am _so_ afraid of doing harm, or vexing father, for though he
is so good, he is--very proud, you know, and--he could not bear it
to--to come round to Lady Myrtle that we were talking about her,
or--thinking about her money.'

Bessie's face by this time was crimson. Frances opened her mouth as if
about to speak, then shut it again, and gazed at Bessie with a variety
of contradictory feelings looking out of her blue eyes. There was
disappointment, strong disappointment that her wonderful schemes for
bringing the Harpers and their old relative together threatened thus to
be nipped in the bud; there was disappointment, too, that she was not to
have the pleasure and importance of relating the story 'just like one
in a book' to her s