CHAPTER XVIII.

YOU THINK I HAVE A SECRET.

A week or so after Anstruthers’ departure Georgie decided that her visit must come to an end. Mamma was not so very well, and poor papa had a touch of his old enemy, the gout; and, really she had been away from home a long time. Did not Lisbeth think that they had better return to London, even though Pen’yllan was still as delightful as ever?

Then they had a surprise indeed.

Lisbeth, who had been listening, in a rather absent manner, aroused herself to astonish them.

“I think,” she said, “that if you do not mind making the journey alone, Georgie, I should like to stay in Pen’yllan this winter.”

“In Pen’yllan?” cried Georgie. “All winter, Lisbeth?”

“At Pen’yllan? Here? With us?” cried Miss Millicent, and Miss Hetty, and Miss Clarissa, in chorus.

“Yes,” answered Lisbeth, in her most non-committal fashion. “At Pen’yllan, Aunt Hetty. Here, Aunt Millicent. With you, Aunt Clarissa.”

The Misses Tregarthyn became quite pale. They glanced at each other, and shook their heads, ominously. This portended something dreadful, indeed.

“My love,” faltered Miss Clarissa.

“What?” interposed Lisbeth. “Won’t you let me stay? Are you tired of me? I told you that you would be, you know, before I came.”

“Oh, my dear!” protested Miss Clarissa. “How can you? Tired of you? Sister Hetty, sister Millicent! Tired of her?”

“We only thought, my love, that it would be so dull to one used to--to the brilliant vortex of London society,” ended Miss Millicent, rather grandly.

“But if I think that it will not,” said Lisbeth. “I am tired of the ‘brilliant vortex of London society.’”

She got up from her chair, and went and stood by Georgie, at the window, looking out.

“Yes,” she said, almost as if speaking to herself, “I think I should like to stay.”

The end of it was, that she did stay. She wrote to Mrs. Despard, that very day, announcing her intention of remaining. Georgie, in packing her trunks, actually shed a few silent tears among her ruffs and ribbons. To her mind, this was a sad termination to her happy visit. She knew that it must mean something serious, that there must be some powerful motive at the bottom of such a resolution. If Lisbeth would only not be so reserved. If it was only a little easier to understand her.

“We shall miss you very much, Lisbeth,” she ventured, mournfully.

“Not more than I shall miss you,” answered Lisbeth, who at the time stood near, watching her as she knelt before the box she was packing.

Georgie paused in her task, to look up doubtfully.

“Then why will you do it?” she said. “You--you must have a reason.”

“Yes,” said Lisbeth, “I have a reason.”

The girl’s eyes still appealed to her; so she went on, with a rather melancholy smile:

“I have two reasons--perhaps more. Pen’yllan agrees with me, and I do not want to go back to town yet. I am going to take a rest. I must need one, or Aunt Clarissa would not find so much fault with my appearance. I don’t want to ‘go off on my looks,’ before my time, and you know they are always telling me I am pale and thin. Am I pale and thin, Georgie?”

“Yes,” confessed Georgie, “you are,” and she gave her a troubled look.

“Then,” returned Lisbeth, “there is all the more reason that I should rusticate. Perhaps, by the spring, I shall be red and fat, like Miss Rosamond Puddifoot,” with a little laugh. “And I shall have taken to tracts, and soup-kitchens, and given up the world, and wear a yellow bonnet, and call London a ‘vortex of sinful pleasure,’ as she does. Why, my dear Georgie, what is the matter?”

The fact was, that a certain incongruity in her beloved Lisbeth’s looks and tone, had so frightened Georgie, and touched her susceptible heart, that the tears had rushed to her eyes, and she was filled with a dolorous pity.

“You are not--you are not happy,” she cried all at once. “You are not, or you would not speak in that queer, satirical way. I wish you would be a little--a little more--kind, Lisbeth.”

Lisbeth’s look was a positively guilty one.

“Kind!” she exclaimed. “Kind, Georgie!”

Having gone so far, Georgie could not easily draw back, and was fain to go on, though she became conscious that she had placed herself in a very trying position.

“It is not kind to keep everything to yourself so closely,” she said, tremulously. “As if we did not care for you, or could not comprehend----”

She stopped, because Lisbeth frightened her again. She became so pale, that it was impossible to say anything more. Her great, dark eyes dilated, as if with a kind of horror, at something.

“You--you think I have a secret,” she interrupted her, with a hollow-sounding laugh. “And you are determined to make a heroine out of me, instead of allowing me to enjoy my ‘nerves’ in peace. You don’t comprehend ‘nerves,’ that is clear. You are running at a red rag, Georgie, my dear. It is astonishing how prone you good, tender-hearted people are to run at red rags, and toss, and worry them.”

It was plain that she would never betray herself. She would hold at arm’s-length even the creature who loved her best, and was most worthy of her confidence. It was useless to try to win her to any revelation of her feelings.

Georgie fell to at her packing again, with a very melancholy consciousness of the fact, that she had done no good by losing control over her innocent emotions, and might have done harm. It had pained her inexpressibly to see that quick dread of self-betrayal, which had announced itself in the sudden loss of color, and the odd expression in her friend’s eyes.

“She does not love me as I love her,” was her pathetic, mental conclusion. “If she did, she would not be so afraid of me.”

When Lisbeth bade her good-by, at the little railway station, the girl’s heart quite failed her.

“What shall I say to mamma and papa?” she asked.

“Tell them that Pen’yllan agrees with me so well that I don’t like to leave it for the present,” was Lisbeth’s answer. “And tell Mrs. Esmond that I will write to her myself.”

“And--” in timid desperation--“and Hector, Lisbeth?”

“Hector?” rather sharply. “Why Hector? What has he to do with the matter? But stay!” shrugging her shoulders. “I suppose it would be only