. Yearsley ran from the study and the servants
from the kitchen, and very soon they had raised her and laid her on the
couch. But none of the restoratives they applied were of any avail, and
presently they carried her upstairs and laid her on her bed.

But before that had happened, Betty, terrified almost out of her senses
by the result of her indiscretion, had flown--flown out of the room and
out of the house.

"Oh, what have I done! what have I done!" she moaned. "Father didn't
want her to know, and Kitty didn't want her to, and now I have told her
and it has killed her. I am sure I have killed her. And father is
away, and Kitty--oh, what can I do? I can never go home any more.
P'r'aps if I'm lost they'll be sorry and will forgive me," and Betty ran
on, nearly frantic with fear, and weeping at the pathetic picture of her
own disappearance.

The next morning Kitty, on her way from the music-room, where she had
been practising before breakfast, saw the morning's letters lying on the
hall table, and amongst them one directed to herself in Betty's hand.
Without waiting to have it given to her in the usual way, she picked it
up, and, little dreaming of the news it held, opened it at once.

"Dear Kitty," she read, "I have run away for ever, and I am never going
home any more. I think I have killed Aunt Pike. I told her something,
and she fell right down on the floor. She was dead, I am sure, and I
ran away. I am too frightened to go home, so do not ask me to. I am
going to earn my living. I am hiding at the farm. Mrs. Henderson
thinks I am going home soon, but I am not; and if she won't let me sleep
here, I shall sleep in the woods. To-morrow I shall try to get a place
as a servant or something. I wish I looked older, and that I had one of
your long skirts. I can put my hair up, but my dress is so short.
Good-bye for ever.--

"Your loving Betty."

"S.P.--Give my love to father if he will except it from me, and tell him
I did not mean to be a bad child to him."

Kitty stood staring blankly at the letter, scarcely able to grasp its
meaning. It seemed too wild, too improbable to be true. Betty had run
away; was frightened, desperate, too frightened to go home; had been out
all night alone; and they were all far away from her, all but Tony.
Kitty felt stunned by the unexpectedness and greatness of the trouble,
but she realized that she must act, and act quickly.

Miss Pidsley and Miss Hammond were gone