"For God's sake don't!--don't say a word about it, or you'll get me into dreadful trouble!" exclaimed Mrs. Peckover, turning pale as she thought of possible consequences, and catching young Thorpe by the arm when he tried to pass her in the passage.

The step up stairs crossed the room again.

"Well, upon my life," cried Zack, "of all the extraordinary old women

"Hush! he's going to open the door this time; he is indeed!"

"Never mind if he does; I won't say anything," whispered young Thorpe, his natural good nature prompting him to relieve Mrs. Peckover's distress, the moment he became convinced that it was genuine.

"That's a good chap! that's a dear good chap!" exclaimed Mrs. Peckover, squeezing Zack's hand in a fervor of unbounded gratitude.

The door of Mrs. Blyth's room opened for the second time.

"He's gone, sir; he's gone at last!" cried Mrs. Peckover, shutting the house door on the parting guest with inhospitable rapidity, and locking it with elaborate care and extraordinary noise.

"I must manage to make it all safe with Master Zack tomorrow night; though I don't believe I have said a single word I oughtn't to say," thought she, slowly ascending the stairs. "But Mr. Blyth makes such fusses, and works himself into such fidgets about the poor thing being traced and taken away from him (which is all stuff and nonsense), that he would go half distracted if he knew what I said just now to Master Zack. Not that it's so much what I said to _him,_ as what he made out somehow and said to _me._ But they're so sharp, these young London chaps--they are so awful sharp!"

Here she stopped on the landing to recover her breath; then whispered to herself, as she went on and approached Mr. Blyth's door:

"But one thing I'm determined on; little Mary shan't have that Hair Bracelet!"

* * * * *

Even as Mrs. Peckover walked thinking all the way up-stairs, so did Zack walk wondering all the way home.

What the deuce could these extraordinary remonstrances about his present to Madonna possibly mean? Was it not at least clear from Mrs. Peckover's terror when he talked of asking Blyth whether Madonna really had a Hair Bracelet, that she had told the truth after all? And was it not even plainer still that she had let out a secret in telling that truth, which Blyth must have ordered her to keep? Why keep it? Was this mysterious Hair Bracelet mixed up somehow with the grand secret about Madonna's past history, which Valentine had always kept from him and from everybody? Very likely it was--but why cudgel his brains about what didn't concern him? Was it not--considering the fact, previously forgotten, that he had but fifteen shillings and threepence of disposable money in the world--rather lucky than otherwise that Mrs. Peckover had taken it into her head to stop him from buying what he hadn't the means of paying for? What other present could he buy for Madonna that was pretty, and cheap enough to suit the present state of his pocket? Would she like a thimble? or an almanack? or a pair of cuffs? or a pot of bear's grease?

Here Zack suddenly paused in his mental interrogatories; for he had arrived within sight of his home in Baregrove Square.