Page:The Lark - E Nesbit, 1922.djvu/276

Rh them, holding out a hand to each, they saw, for the first time, that which Mr. Dix had described as a sort of radiant goodness shining from her face.

"Yes, rather!" they said; and Jane added, "It's most awfully decent of you not to be ratty with us for playing such a trick on you."

"But," said Lucilla, struck by a sudden thought, "do you think the others spotted the false aunt?"

"Oh no," Miss Antrobus assured her, "not one of them! You acted splendidly. I was the only one that had the least suspicion!"

That night Lucilla woke suddenly: very wide awake she was—so wide awake that she knew it would be vain to thump the pillow and turn over. She had better read. Or, better still, write up her diary. The brown morocco volume with the shining lock and her name in gilt letters on it had been the guardian's present when she was fifteen. She had neglected it lately. True, many interesting things had happened—things that would have impelled the diarist of fifteen, sixteen, seventeen, to pages of chronicle and comment. But there had been nothing which moved nineteen to a record—under lock and key—until. . . Well, anyhow, Lucilla did now feel that she had neglected her diary too long. It was down in the bureau in the drawing-room. Well, she supposed she could fetch it.

She lit her shaded candle, slipped into the silken blue kimono with the apple-blossom embroidery on it—another of the guardian's presents—and, candle in hand, crept down the wide stairs. But as she went, the air from an open window blew out her candle. And then she saw below her a yellow streak of light from the drawing-room door. Someone else was up. At three in the morning? Jane, looking for a book? Gladys, looking for traces of secrets in her particular department of knowledge? An insomnolent P.G.? A burglar? Lucilla crept down the remaining stairs and laid an eye to the crack of the drawing-room door. And it was a burglar!