If Margaret had said what was in her mind at that moment, she would have said that what she longed most to hear was herself telling Eleanor that she wanted to change back into her proper self again; but somehow, though the words were on the tip of her tongue, she could not bring herself to utter them. With a sinking heart she was beginning to realise that Eleanor, far from wanting to be herself again, would much rather remain Margaret Anstruther. And it was dreadful to think of the disappointment that she must cause her when she said what she had come to say.
"Well, now to begin at the beginning," Eleanor said, leaning comfortably back on her chair with her hands lying loosely on her lap. Margaret noticed that three fingers of her right hand were in bandages. "I can confess now what I am sure you never guessed at the time, and that is that I was in a horrid fright when I said good-bye to you at the station, and I believe at the very last minute if I could have jumped back into the train I would have done so, but Mrs. Murray was so kind that I soon got over my nervousness. Not that it would have mattered, though, if I hadn't," she added with a little laugh, "for Margaret, I found, was expected to be shy. I suppose, as poor Mrs. Murray is so dreadfully deaf, it is easier to pass myself off as you than it might otherwise have been, but certainly if I have made any glaring mistakes she has never noticed them, and if I really had been you my task could not have been simpler. Of course, the first evening she asked me a great many questions about Mr. Anstruther and your home, and your lessons, and your governess, and why the doctor had said you were to go away, and so on, and I answered them all in first-class style, for I have everything you had told me fresh in my mind. Oh, but what do you think! Our plans might have been wrecked at the outset by something neither of us had foreseen. That evening, just as we were going to bed, Mrs. Murray said to me in the quiet, low tone in which she always speaks, and which it makes it dreadfully difficult to hear what she says, that the first thing next morning I must write to my grandfather, and tell him of my safe arrival. I was dismayed, if you like, for I had no notion what your handwriting was like, or any hope of copying it if I knew, but I kept my countenance, and gave no sign of dismay. And the next morning at breakfast, while cutting a piece of bread in half, the knife slipped and I cut the three middle fingers of my right hand so badly that each of them had to be wrapped up in bandages. So you see that to hold a pen was impossible, and Mrs. Murray wrote instead of me to announce my safe arrival here."
"Oh, Eleanor!" Margaret exclaimed, "and you cut yourself on purpose."
"Of course, it was the only thing to be done; and I say I did it so well that I haven't been able to write yet. It was rather nice and clever of me wasn't it?"
"It was very clever," Margaret said, in a grave voice.
Three days ago, when they had laid this plot together, she might have been able to add that this final little touch of Eleanor's was nice, too; but somehow she could not now bring herself to utter the word. Eleanor, however, never noticed the omission, but in the vivacious tone in which she had spoken throughout, went on to give a further account of all that had happened to her since she had left Margaret at the station three days since. That she was completely happy could not be doubted. Every word she uttered showed that she was radiantly content with her new existence, and was not troubled by as much as one small single scruple as to the deception on Mrs. Murray that she was so successfully carrying out. Indeed, it was evident that she had not given that side of the matter a thought.
"But I am keeping the best part of all until the last to tell you," she said; "and that is, of course, about my voice."
"Your voice," echoed Margaret. "Oh, of course, about your singing, you mean."
She had completely forgotten Eleanor's great ambition to be a famous singer.
"You remember what I told you that Signor Vanucci said to me, that I ought to be the greatest singer of my generation, that he foresaw a splendid future before me, that my voice had infinite possibilities. But that it was, of course, quite untrained."