I am, Priorsford will reveal it. I feel that there will be something
very revealing about Miss Bella Bathgate.

"Poor Biddy, to have such an effusion hurled at you!

"But you'll admit I don't often mention my soul.

"I doubt if you will be able to read this letter. If you can make it
out, forgive it being so full of myself. The next will be full of quite
other things. All my love, Biddy.--Yours, PAM."

* * * * *

Three hours later the express stopped at the junction. The train was
waiting on the branch line that terminated at Priorsford, and after a
breathless rush over a high bridge in the dark Pamela and her maid,
Mawson, found themselves bestowed in an empty carriage by a fatherly
porter.

Mawson was not a real lady's maid: one realised that at once. She had
been a housemaid for some years in the house in Grosvenor Street, and
Pamela, when her own most superior maid flatly refused to accompany her
on this expedition, had asked Mawson to be her maid, and Mawson had
gladly accepted the offer. She was a middle-aged woman with a small
brown face, an obvious _toupée_, and an adventurous spirit.

She now tidied the carriage violently, carefully hiding the book Pamela
had been reading and putting the cushion on the rack. Finally, tucking
the travelling-rug firmly round her mistress, she remarked pleasantly,
"A h'eight hours' journey without an 'itch!"