“Well, some one did!” I said; then she smiled.

“Oh, that must have been Marian. She was always Olivia’s loyal friend!”

“I should say so!”

Sister Theresa laughed merrily.

“But you shouldn’t have known Olivia,—it is unpardonable! If she played tricks upon you, you should not have taken advantage of them to make her acquaintance. That wasn’t fair to me!”

“I suppose not! But I protest against this deportation. The landscape hereabouts is only so much sky, snow and lumber without her.”

“We miss her, too,” replied Sister Theresa. “We have less to do!”

“And still I protest!” I declared, rising. “Sister Theresa, I thank you with all my heart for what you have said to me,—for the disposition to say it! And this debt to the estate is something, I promise you, that shall not trouble you.”

“Then there’s a truce between us! We are not enemies at all now, are we?”

“No; for Olivia’s sake, at least, we shall be friends.”

I went home and studied the time-table.

CHAPTER XVIII

GOLDEN BUTTERFLIES

If you are one of those captious people who must verify by the calendar every new moon you read of in a book, and if you are pained to discover the historian lifting anchor and spreading sail contrary to the reckonings of the nautical almanac, I beg to call your attention to these items from the time-table of the Mid-Western and Southern Railway for December, 1901.

The south-bound express passed Annandale at exactly fifty-three minutes after four P. M. It was scheduled to reach Cincinnati at eleven o’clock sharp. These items are, I trust, sufficiently explicit.

To the student of morals and motives I will say a further word. I had resolved to practise deception in running away from Glenarm House to keep my promise to Marian Devereux. By leaving I should forfeit my right to any part of my grandfather’s estate; I knew that and accepted the issue without regret; but I had no intention of surrendering Glenarm House to Arthur Pickering particularly now that I realized how , completely I had placed myself in his trap. I felt, and—not moreover, a duty to my dead grandfather; least—the attacks of Morgan and the strange ways of Bates had stirred whatever fighting blood there was in me. Pickering and I were engaged in a sharp contest, and I was beginning to enjoy it to the full, but I did not falter in my determination to visit Cincinnati, hoping to return without my absence being discovered; so the next afternoon I began preparing for my journey.

“Bates, I fear that I’m taking a severe cold and I’m going to dose myself with whisky and quinine and go to bed. I shan’t want any dinner,—nothing until you see me again.”

I yawned and stretched myself with a groan.

“I’m very sorry sir. Shan’t I call a doctor?”