Betty saw her fall, and flew from the room screaming for help.  Help was not long in coming.  Dr. Yearsley ran from the study and the servants from the kitchen, and very soon they had raised her and laid her on the couch.  But none of the restoratives they applied were of any avail, and presently they carried her upstairs and laid her on her bed.

But before that had happened, Betty, terrified almost out of her senses by the result of her indiscretion, had flown—­flown out of the room and out of the house.

“Oh, what have I done! what have I done!” she moaned.  “Father didn’t want her to know, and Kitty didn’t want her to, and now I have told her and it has killed her.  I am sure I have killed her.  And father is away, and Kitty—­oh, what can I do?  I can never go home any more.  P’r’aps if I’m lost they’ll be sorry and will forgive me,” and Betty ran on, nearly frantic with fear, and weeping at the pathetic picture of her own disappearance.

The next morning Kitty, on her way from the music-room, where she had been practising before breakfast, saw the morning’s letters lying on the hall table, and amongst them one directed to herself in Betty’s hand.  Without waiting to have it given to her in the usual way, she picked it up, and, little dreaming of the news it held, opened it at once.

“Dear Kitty,” she read, “I have run away for ever, and I am never going home any more.  I think I have killed Aunt Pike.  I told her something, and she fell right down on the floor.  She was dead, I am sure, and I ran away.  I am too frightened to go home, so do not ask me to.  I am going to earn my living.  I am hiding at the farm.  Mrs. Henderson thinks I am going home soon, but I am not; and if she won’t let me sleep here, I shall sleep in the woods.  To-morrow I shall try to get a place as a servant or something.  I wish I looked older, and that I had one of your long skirts.  I can put my hair up, but my dress is so short.  Good-bye for ever.—­

“Your loving Betty.”

“S.P.—­Give my love to father if he will except it from me, and tell him I did not mean to be a bad child to him.”

Kitty stood staring blankly at the letter, scarcely able to grasp its meaning.  It seemed too wild, too improbable to be true.  Betty had run away; was frightened, desperate, too frightened to go home; had been out all night alone; and they were all far away from her, all but Tony.  Kitty felt stunned by the unexpectedness and greatness of the trouble, but she realized that she must act, and act quickly.

Miss Pidsley and Miss Hammond were gone to an early service at the church, but it never occurred to Kitty to wait for them and consult them.  She only realized that a train left for Gorlay in twenty minutes’ time, and that if she could catch it she could be at home in little more than two hours, and on the spot to seek for Betty.  She cleared the stairs two at a time, and in less than three minutes was flying