The elder woman raised the loving girl’s glowing face to her own and fondly kissed her trembling lips:
“Ah! this is an easy task for you! I can guess your secret, darling,” Sara sadly said. “But, I am going away to share Hugh’s lot.
“I do not sail to Europe with you. I have not yet told your dear mother.
“For she will know it soon enough, and then over there, beyond the sea, you will live in new scenes, with other friends to share your happy hours. You will be soon called back—there, don’t deny it.
“And your mother—who would not love her?” The blushing girl was seized with a sudden impulse, love’s chords were thrilling in her heart.
It was on that very afternoon that Miss Romaine Garland drove resolutely to the station and indited a telegram which brought Hugh Conyers promptly to the door of Lakemere, as the setting sun was dropping behind the western hills of the Highlands. He feared the very worst; some sudden disaster.
The mystified face of his loving sister at once undeceived the man whose heart had been so strangely stirred by Miss Mischief’s imperative dispatch. For, the Silent Knight had “reported for duty.” It was a lovingly set trap.
“Nothing has really happened?” he asked, with a fear of some reserved news of unwelcome portent.
“Nothing, sir,” said Elaine Willoughby, quietly, as she suddenly appeared before him, bringing a quick thrill to his heart, “but that you are now under arrest as a deserter, and so will have to stand a formal court-martial.”
It was a second strategic movement on the part of Romaine Garland, that summons of her lark-like voice calling Sara Conyers to some consultation of truly feminine gravity, in the distant seclusion of her own rooms. “Miss Mischief” was en suprême