happened to them before the German army crossed the Channel—if they were not able to prevent the crossing. And what would happen to the girls after its crossing, when it poured over London and the rest of England in the unbridled rage of drunken victory."
He so spoke because beneath his outward coldness he himself felt a secret rage against this lightness which, as he saw things, had its parallel in another order of trivial unawareness in more important places and larger brains. Feather started and drew somewhat nearer to him.
"How hideous! What do you mean! Where was the party?" she asked.
"It was a small dance given by the Duchess, very kindly, for Robin," he answered.
"For Robin!" with open eyes whose incredulity held irritation. "The old Duchess giving parties to her 'useful companion' girl! What nonsense! Who was there?" sharply.
"The young fellows who would be first called on if there was war. And the girls who are their relatives. Halwyn was there—and young Dormer and Layton—they are all in the army. The cannon balls would be for them as well as for the Tommies of their regiments. They are spirited lads who wouldn't slink behind. They'd face things."
Feather had already forgotten her moment's shock in another thought.
"And they were invited to meet Robin! Did they dance with her? Did she dance much? Or did she sit and stare and say nothing? What did she wear?"
"She looked like a very young white rose. She danced continually. There was always a little mob about her when the music stopped. I do not think she sat at all, and it was the young men who stared. The only dance she missed—Kathryn told her grandmother—was the one she sat out in the conservatory with Donal Muir."
At this Feather's high, thin little laugh broke forth.
"He turned up there? Donal Muir!" She struck her hands lightly together. "It's too good to be true!"
"Why is it too good to be true?" he inquired without enthusiasm.
"Oh, don't you see? After all his mother's airs and graces and running away with him when they were a pair of babies—as if Robin had the plague. I was the plague—and so were you. And here the old Duchess throws them headlong at each other—in all their full bloom—into each other's arms. I did not do it. You didn't. It was the stuffiest old female grandee in London, who wouldn't let me sweep her front door-steps for her—because I'm an impropriety."
She asked a dozen questions, was quite humorous over the picture she drew of Mrs. Muir's consternation at the peril her one ewe lamb had been led into by her highly revered friend.
"A frightfully good-looking, spoiled boy like that always plunges headlong into any adventure that attracts him. Women have always made love to him and Robin will make great eyes, and blush and look at him from under her lashes as if she were going to cry with joy—like Alice in the Ben Bolt song. She'll 'weep with delight when he gives her a smile and tremble with fear at his frown.' His mother can't stop it, however furious she may be. Nothing can stop that sort of thing when it once begins."
"If England declares war Donal Muir will have more serious things to do than pursue adventures," was Coombe's comment. He looked serious himself as he said the words, because they brought before him the bodily strength and beauty of the lad. He seemed suddenly to see him again as he had looked when he was dancing. And almost at the same moment he saw other scenes than ball-rooms and heard sounds other than those drawn forth by musicians screened with palms. He liked the boy. He was not his son, but he liked him. If he had been his son, he thought—! He had been through the monster munition works at Essen several times and he had heard technical talks of inventions, the sole reason for whose presence in the world was that they had the power to blow human beings into unrecognisable, ensanguined shreds and to tear off limbs and catapult them into the air. He had heard these powers talked of with a sense of natural pride in achievement, in fact with honest and cheerful self gratulation.
He had known Count Zeppelin well and heard his interesting explanation of what would happen to a thickly populated city on to which bombs were dropped.
But Feather's view was lighter and included only such things as she found entertaining.
"If there's a war the heirs of great families won't be snatched at first," she quite rattled on. "There'll be a sort of economising in that sort of thing. Besides he's very young and he isn't in the Army. He'd have to go through some sort of training. Oh, he'll have time! And there'll be so much emotion and excitement and talk about parting forever and 'This may be the last time we ever meet' sort of thing that every boy will have adventure—and not only boys. When I warned Robin, the night before she went away, I did not count on war or I could have said more—"
"What did you warn her of?"
"Of making mistakes about the men who would make love to her. I warned her against imagining she was as safe as she would be if she were a daughter of the house she lived in. I knew what I was talking about."
"Did she?" was Coombe's concise question.
"Of course she did—though of course she pretended not to. Girls always pretend. But I did my duty as a parent. And I told her that if she got herself into any mess she mustn't come to me."
Lord Coombe regarded her in silence for a moment or so. It was one of the looks which always made her furious in her small way.
"Good morning," he said and turned his back and walked out of the room. Almost immediately after he had descended the stairs she heard the front door close after him.
It was the kind of thing which made her feel her utter helplessness against him and which enraged all the little cat in her being. She actually ground her small teeth.
"I was quite right," she said. "It's her affair to take care of herself. Would he want her to come to him in any silly fix? I should like to see her try it."
CHAPTER III
Robin sat at the desk in her private room and looked at a key she held in her hand. She had just come upon it among some papers. She had put it into a narrow lacquered box when she arranged her belongings, after she left the house in which her mother continued to live. It was the key which gave entrance to the Gardens. Each householder possessed one. She alone knew why she rather timidly asked her mother's permission to keep this one.
"One of the first things I seem to remember is watching the gardeners planting flowers," Robin had said. "They had rows of tiny pots with geraniums and lobelia in them. I have been happy there. I should like to be able to go in sometimes and sit under the trees. If you do not mind—"
Feather did not mind. She herself was not in the least likely to be seized with a desire to sit under trees in an atmosphere heavy with nursemaids and children.
So Robin had been allowed to keep the key and until to-day she had not opened the lacquer box. Was it quite by accident that she had found it? She was not quite sure it was and she was asking herself questions, as she sat looking at it as it lay in her palm.
The face of the whole world had changed since the night when she had sat among banked flowers and palms and ferns, and heard the splashing of the fountain and the sound of the music and dancing, and Donal Muir's
