She was to see her again—by Feather’s intention.

With Donal prancing at her side, Mrs. Muir went to the Gardens to meet the child Nanny had described as “a bit of witch fire dancing—with her colour and her big silk curls in a heap, and Donal staring at her like a young man at a beauty.”

Robin was waiting behind the lilac bushes and her nurse was already deep in the mystery of “Lady Audley.”

“There she is!” cried Donal, as he ran to her. “My mother has come with me. This is Robin, mother! This is Robin.”

Her exquisiteness and physical brilliancy gave Mrs. Muir something not unlike a slight shock. Oh! No wonder, since she was like that. She stooped and kissed the round cheek delicately. She took the little hand and they walked round the garden, then sat on a bench and watched the children “make up” things to play.

A victoria was driving past. Suddenly a sweetly hued figure spoke to the coachman. “Stop here,” she said. “I want to get out.”

Robin’s eyes grew very round and large and filled with a worshipping light.

“It is,” she gasped, “the Lady Downstairs!”

Feather floated near to the seat and paused, smiling. “Where is your nurse, Robin?” she asked.

“She is only a few yards away,” said Mrs. Muir.

“So kind of you to let Robin play with your boy. Don’t let her bore you. I am Mrs. Gareth-Lawless.”

There was a little silence, a delicate little silence.

“I recognized you as Mrs. Muir at once,” added Feather, unperturbed and smiling brilliantly. “ I saw your portrait at the Grovenor.”

“Yes,” said Mrs. Muir, gently.

“I wanted very much to see your son; that was why I came.”

“Yes,” still gently from Mrs. Muir.

“Because of Coombe, you know. We are such old friends. How queer that the two little things have made friends too. I didn’t know.”

She bade them good-bye and strayed airily away.

And that night Donal was awakened, was told that “something” had happened, that they were to go back to Scotland. He was accustomed to do as he was told. He got out of bed and began to dress, but he swallowed very hard.

“I shall not see Robin,” he said in a queer voice. “She won’t find me when she goes behind the lilac bushes. She won’t know why I don’t come.” Then, in a way that was strangely grown up: “ She has no one but me to remember.”

The next morning a small, rose-coloured figure stood still for so long in the gardens that it began to look rigid and some one said, “I wonder what that little girl is waiting for.”

A child has no words out of which to build hopes and fears. Robin could only wait in the midst of a slow dark rising tide of something she had no name for. Suddenly she knew. He was gone! She crept under the shrubbery.