oy know? What had he seen? What had he been told? She remembered that
Mr. Tosswill was a magistrate. Had the Pipers been down to see him?

"There were some people," went on the boy, and again he spoke in that
queer, muffled whisper, almost as if the words were being dragged out of
him against his will, "who thought"--he stopped--"who thought," he
repeated, "that Colonel Crofton did not take that poison knowingly."

She told herself desperately that she must say something--something
ordinary, something of no account, before a power outside herself forced
her to utter words which would lead to horror incalculable.

Speaking in such a loud discordant voice that Timmy quickly moved back a
step or two, she exclaimed: "I was not going to tell anybody yet--but as
you seem so anxious to know my plans, I will tell you a secret, Timmy.
I _am_ going to India after all! A splendid strong man, an officer and a
gentleman who would have won the V.C. ten times over in any other war,
and who would _kill_ anyone who ever said a word against me, has asked me
to be his wife, and to go out to India very, very soon."

"And have you said you will?" he asked.

"Of course I have."

"And will you be married soon?" went on her inquisitor.

"Yes, very soon," she cried hysterically. "As soon as possible!"

"Then you will have to leave Beechfield."

She told herself with a kind of passionate rage that the child had no
right to ask her such a silly, obvious question, and yet she answered at
once: "Of course I shall leave Beechfield."

"And you will never come back?"

"I shall never, _never_ come back." And then she added, almost as if in
spite of herself, and with a kind of strange, bitter truthfulness very
foreign to her: "I don't like Beechfield--I don't agree that it's a
pretty place--I think it's a hideous little village."

There was a pause. She was seeking for a phrase in which to say
"Good-bye," not so much to Timmy as to all the others.

"Will you go away to-morrow?" he asked, this time boldly. And she
answered, "Yes, to-morrow."

"Perhaps I'd better not tell any of them at Old Place?" It was as if he
was speaking to himself.

She clutched at the words.

"I would far rather you did not tell them--I will write to them from
London. Can I trust you not to tell them, Timmy?"

He looked at her oddly. "Jack and Rosamund will be sorry," he said
slowly. And then he jerked his head--his usual way of signifying
"Good-bye" when he di