Betty dropped on to the window-seat and covered her face with her hands.  “Don’t look at me; I don’t want to see you look mad with me.  It was Aunt Pike’s fault first of all.  If she hadn’t said nasty—­oh, horrid things about you, I shouldn’t have told her what I did, but—­but she made me, Kitty; I couldn’t help it, and—­and I told her right out that Anna could have cleared you long ago, and that she and Lettice were mean and dishonourable to let you bear the blame for them all this time.  And when she spoke after that, her voice sounded so—­oh, so dreadful, as if she was talking in her sleep, or was far away, or drowning, and she looked—­oh, her face frightened me, and then she said, ’Did—­Anna—­ know?’ all slow and gaspy like that, as if she hadn’t any breath, and I said ’Yes’—­I had to say ‘yes’ then, hadn’t I?  Of course I didn’t know it would make her ill, but she fell right down, all of a heap, and oh, I nearly died of fright, and I ran and ran all the way to Wenmere Woods, and I meant never to come back again—­never!  And it was all Mrs. Henderson’s fault that I did come—­at least Mrs. Henderson’s and Bumble’s, and,” drawing herself up with great dignity, “I am never going to speak to either of them again.  When I had had my tea—­she gave me cream and jam, but not any ham—­and when I had played about for a little while, she told me she thought I had better be going home, as I was alone; and at last I had to tell her I was never going home any more, and I would be her little servant, if she would take me, only no one must ever see me, or I should be discovered, but she wasn’t a bit nice as she generally is.  She said, ’Oh, nonsense; little girls mustn’t talk like that.  I am going to Gorlay to chapel, and I will take you back with me.’

“Then I knew it wasn’t any good to ask her to help me, and that I must sleep in the wood with all the wild beasts and things”—­Betty’s face and her story grew more and more melodramatic—­“and as soon as she had gone to put on her bonnet, I ran into the woods for my life.  I expect when she came down again and didn’t see me she thought I had gone home.  I don’t think anybody went to look for me, and I think it was very unkind of them, for I might have been eaten up, for all they knew, by wild beasts—­”

“Oh no,” said Kitty, rousing for the first time from the shock and distress Betty’s revelations had thrown her into.  “There is nothing in the woods more savage than rabbits and squirrels.”

Betty looked hurt.  “Oh yes, there is,” she protested, “or I shouldn’t have gone up and kept close to the railway lines.  I saw something, quite large, staring at me with great savage eyes, and if it wasn’t a wolf, I am sure it was a badger or—­or a wild-cat.”

“Did it fly at you?”