CHAPTER I. Margaret's Dream Friend
CHAPTER II. Margaret overhears a Conversation
CHAPTER III. Margaret starts on a Journey
CHAPTER IV. Margaret makes a Friend
CHAPTER V. Eleanor Carson
CHAPTER VI. Margaret and Eleanor change Names
CHAPTER VII. Mrs. Murray meets the Train
CHAPTER VIII. Maud Danvers
CHAPTER IX. The Danvers Family
CHAPTER X. Eleanor at Windy Gap
CHAPTER XI. A Practical Joke
CHAPTER XII. Eleanor meets Margaret's Aunt
CHAPTER XIII. Hilary turns Detective
CHAPTER XIV. The Hour of Reckoning
CHAPTER XV. An Unexpected Visitor
CHAPTER XVI. Conclusion

"Margaret!" said the Old Man, breaking into speech at last, and in a very harsh voice: "What Folly is this?"
"I am going for a Walk into the Town," she said, shyly
Maud swung round and saw Margaret standing with a Pile of Letters by her Mother's Chair
Eleanor turned to the Piano, and ran her Fingers Lightly over the Keys
"That Girl," pointing a lean, accusing Finger at Eleanor, "is not my Granddaughter Margaret"

It was a sultry afternoon in early July. The sun was shining out of a cloudless blue sky, the air was so still and so overpoweringly hot that it seemed to have sent every living creature, save the owner of the voice that was calling upon Margaret Anstruther, to sleep, for no answer was returned to the thrice repeated call, and the silence which the summons had broken settled once more over the garden. Not a leaf on even one of the topmost twigs of the huge old elms from underneath which that insistent voice had come was stirring, not an insect chirped, and the birds who held morning and evening concerts among the branches were silent now.

"Margaret Anstruther, will you come and play tennis? My brothers Reginald and Lionel want a game, and if
you will play we shall be four, and because you have not had much practice lately you shall play with
Reginald, for he plays better than Lionel."

Greystones was noted for its elm-trees. The grounds, indeed, contained little else in the shape of flowers or
trees but elms. For a few brief weeks in spring when they were dressed in the tenderest of greens they were
lovely, and in the autumn, if the leaves were not stripped off by gales before they had a chance to turn golden,
their hues could vie with those flaunted by any other trees, but in the summer their dull, uniform green was apt
to become monotonous, and Margaret Anstruther was then wont to declare that she could cheerfully have
rooted up every one of them.

But as the remark never reached any one else's ears but her own, no one's feelings were hurt. A chance visitor
to Greystones, regular visitors were not encouraged, had once observed that the entire grounds, some thirty or
forty acres in extent, which comprised the domain must have been an elm wood originally, and that a space
just sufficient on which to erect a house of moderate dimensions had been cleared in the heart of it,
Greystones had been built, a way cut through the trees to form a drive to the road a quarter of a mile distant
from the house, and the rest of the wood left undisturbed to be called a garden or not as the owner pleased.

Certainly the present owner had made no attempt to form a garden, but had allowed the elms to grow right up
to the walls of the house and to darken the windows of the gloomily situated dwelling as much as they
pleased.

"Margaret Anstruther, if you will not come and play tennis, will you come for a ride upon your bicycle\u2014that
nice new one that you received as a present from\ue000from your grandfather." Here the speaker paused and
laughed as if the idea of Margaret Anstruther getting a bicycle from her grandfather was a distinctly amusing
idea. "We will go far, far along to the blue distance\ue001much farther than you ever went with Miss
Bidwell\ue002and we will have tea at the inn down by the river and come home by moonlight. We shall be quite
safe, for Reginald and Lionel will be with us, and they will take care of us."

The part of the grounds in which this so far one-sided conversation was taking place was at some considerable
distance from the house, in fact it was right on the confines of the wood and as far from the house as possible.
Beyond the wood flat, green fields stretched on all sides undiversified by as much as a copse or a hill. Even a
bare, ploughed field would have been a welcome relief to the landscape, while a yellow cornfield would have
imparted a positively gay appearance to it; but year in year out those green fields wore always the same
aspect.

But dull though the view might be, it was at least a wide one, and there were the sheep and the cows that
grazed in them to look at. Occasionally, too, a stray passer-by, under the erroneous impression that in crossing
them he was taking a short cut, would venture into them, only to turn back discomfited when confronted with
padlocked gates and hedges threaded with barbed wire, to say nothing of notice boards warning trespassers to
beware.

For the man who owned Greystones and those densely wooded grounds also owned the fields that surrounded them, and his hatred of intruders was well known in the immediate neighbourhood. It was a brave child who crept through his hedges or climbed over his gates to pick primroses or blackberries, and the urchin that was unlucky enough to encounter old Mr. Anstruther while so engaged never ventured to trespass on his property again.

"Margaret Anstruther! Margaret Anstruther! are you going to sit under that tree all the afternoon? If you are too lazy to play tennis or to come for a ride, will you come with me to Lady Barchester's garden party? She has invited two hundred guests, and you must wear that lovely white muslin dress with the little frills all up the skirt, and the big white hat with the pink roses, and do not forget to take the pink chiffon parasol that was sent you from Paris last week. We have been asked to remain to dinner there, you may remember, for there will be a dance afterwards. And the moon will be shining, and will it not be very pleasant to sit out in the garden between the dances! Will you come, Margaret Anstruther?"

That proposal was surely one that ought to have been tempting enough to have called forth an answer of some
sort from the girl to whom it was addressed, but it was met by the same dead silence that had followed the
other suggestions.

Then somewhere near at hand a gate creaked loudly, there was the sound of a key being turned in a padlock, and with his back towards the sunlit fields from which he had come some ten minutes previously, the tall, thin figure of an old man with a flowing white beard and with an Inverness cloak hanging from his spare shoulders strode over the grass in the direction of the thick clump of trees from which the unseen voice had proceeded.

"Margaret Anstruther," it went on, "do you not then wish to do any of the nice things I have told you about? Do you like sitting here by yourself, when outside in the world real things are happening, and there are real people to whom you might be talking, and whom you might know? Are you happy? Tell me that."

The old man came to a pause, as abrupt as it was involuntary. Had any one been there to see his face at that
moment they would have perceived that he was finding it difficult to believe the evidence of his ears. Almost
against his will it seemed he waited to hear the answer to that question, for his obvious impulse had been to
stride on and confront the speaker, on whom his cold blue eyes, lightened now with a gleam of anger, rested.
She was sitting at the foot of a big elm-tree, with her back resting against its trunk and her hands loosely
clasped round her knees. She was very young, and the forlorn droop of her figure and the pathetic expression
that was at that moment depicted upon her face made her look even younger than her years, which numbered
barely eighteen.

"Oh, Eleanor Humphreys!" she said, and her clear hazel eyes brimmed over with tears as she spoke. "I am
very, very miserable. Nobody loves me, and I have nobody to love except you, of course, Eleanor Humphreys,
and sometimes I cannot make believe that you are real at all."