better not talk to you about Mr Jeffreys," said
Scarfe with a sneer, which did him more damage in Raby's eyes than a
torrent of abuse from his lips. "Do you know you have never yet shown
me the telegram you had about your father's last battle? It came the
morning I was away, you know."

"Yes. I fancied perhaps you did not care to see it, as you never asked
me," said Raby, producing the precious paper from her dress, where she
kept it like a sort of talisman.

"How could you think that?" said Scarfe reproachfully, who had quite
forgotten to ask to see it.

He took the paper and glanced down it.

"Hullo!" said he, starting as Jeffreys had done. "Captain Forrester! I
wonder if that's poor young Forrester's father?"

"Who is poor young Forrester?" inquired Raby.

Scarfe read the paper to the end, and then looked up in well-simulated
confusion.

"Poor young Forrester? Oh--well, I dare say Jeffreys could tell you
about him. The fact is, Miss Atherton, if I am not allowed to talk of
people behind their backs it is impossible for me to tell you the story
of poor young Forrester."

"Then," said Raby, flushing, as she folded up the paper, "I've no desire
to hear it."

Scarfe could see he had gone too far.

"I have offended you," said he, "but really I came upon the name so
unexpectedly that--"

"Do you expect to be working hard this term at Oxford?" said Raby, doing
the kindest thing in turning the conversation.

It was hardly to be wondered at if she retired that night considerably
perplexed and disturbed. There was some mystery attaching to Jeffreys,
which, if she was to set any store by Scarfe's insinuations, was of a
disgraceful kind. And the agitation which both Scarfe and Jeffreys had
shown on reading the telegram seemed to connect this Captain Forrester,
or rather his son, whom Scarfe spoke of as "poor young Forrester," with
the same mystery. Raby was a young lady with the usual allowance of
feminine curiosity, which, though she was charity itself, did not like
to be baulked by a mystery.

She therefore opened a letter she had just finished to her father, to
add the following postscript:--

"Was this brave Captain Forrester who saved the guns a friend of yours?
Tell me all about him. Had he a wife and children? Surely something
will be done for them, poor things."

Early next morning Mrs Scarfe and her son left Wildtree.

Jeffreys, from Percy's window, watched them drive away.

"Very glad