Several times already in the course of the past few weeks had Mrs. Danvers broached this subject to Margaret, but the latter had always hitherto been able to avoid giving her a direct answer as to why she was not willing to take the post. But what a thousand pities it was, Margaret thought, that Eleanor could not accept it. Once the wild idea had occurred to Margaret that she ought to accept it in Eleanor's name, and manage somehow to change places with her at the very last moment--on board the ship, even, perhaps; but fortunately she had seen the utter folly of that notion before it had taken firm route in her mind. She did not even know if Eleanor would have cared to go to Los Angelos had the chance been offered to her, for though she had seen Eleanor twice since the day on which she had first gone to Windy Gap, she had not been able to broach the subject to her. For on both occasions Eleanor had been so full of her own news, and their meetings had been of necessity so brief, that by the time Eleanor had poured out all she wanted to say the moment had come for them to part.
Margaret felt very much older than the girl who had left her grandfather's house three weeks ago. A great deal of experience had been pressed into those three weeks, and she had learned many things. Among them she had learned what perhaps at the time she had scarcely believed that there was, as Eleanor had said bitterly, a good deal of difference in their respective positions, and that an escapade which could not be visited very seriously on one might affect the other rather disastrously. Margaret knew now that Mrs. Danvers, good-natured as she was, would certainly have refused to take Eleanor in her place if she, Margaret, had carried out her intention of confessing everything. But in spite of that knowledge she still clung to the hope that the post at Los Angelos, which was being so warmly pressed upon the false Eleanor Carson, might eventually be offered to the real one! And so, if only for the sake of keeping the place open to Eleanor, she felt that she could not refuse it outright. What Eleanor meant to do when the holidays were over and they had to take their own names again, Margaret did not know. As far as she could judge from their brief, stolen interviews at Windy Gap, Eleanor continued to be radiantly happy there and to be earning golden opinions from Madame Martelli, and to be absolutely untroubled by any thoughts beyond the immediate present. The fact that she could not be Margaret Anstruther for ever never seemed as much as to enter her head. She gave no thought to the future at all. And of course, Margaret reflected, if she expected to be a celebrated Prima Donna by the end of the summer holidays, that was all right, but if not, did she intend to stay on at Windy Gap indefinitely and send her, the real Margaret, back to the school in her place? If such a thing were possible, Margaret felt sure that Eleanor would despatch her there with the utmost cheerfulness, and consequently Margaret was deeply thankful that such a course was not feasible, for Eleanor could hardly hope to pass another girl off as herself in a school where she had lived for the last seven or eight years. What, then, did Eleanor mean to do?