He told me all about it when he came back. I had been at the window, and had seen Hugh John and Elizabeth Fortinbras ride off together. For any one who saw them there was but one thing to think. They looked so handsome that any other explanation seemed inadmissible. Only we at home knew different.
"Sis," he said, when at last we got out to the gun-room, which father uses occasionally for smoking in, "there never was a girl like Elizabeth Fortinbras!"
At this I whistled softly—a habit for which I am always being checked, and as often forgetting.
"And what about Cissy Carter?" I asked.
He looked at me once with a kind of "If-you-have-any-shame-in-thee, girl, prepare-to-shed-it-now" manner, before which I quailed. Then he told me how Elizabeth had ridden out to tell him of the treachery of Meg Linwood. Together they had made out an urgency telegram, had found the post-master, and had dispatched it to Paris that very night.
It said: "Half silver token lost. If sent you by mischievous persons, please return immediately to its owner, Hugh John Picton Smith."
"And that, I think, covers the case—she will understand!" said Elizabeth Fortinbras.
But low in her own heart, as she rode up the long steep street to New Erin Villa, she added the rider, "That is, if she is not a goose!"