“Now the way is clear!” she said—­“I can do what I like—­I have my wings, and I can fly away!  Oh Dad, dear Dad!—­you would be so unhappy if you knew what I mean to do!—­it would break your heart, Dad!—­but you have no heart to break now, poor Dad!—­it is cold as stone!—­it will never beat any more!  Mine is the heart that beats!—­the heart that burns, and aches, and hurts me!—­ah!—­how it hurts!  And no one can understand—­no one will ever care to understand!”

She locked her manuscript-drawer—­then went and bathed her eyes, which smarted with the tears she had shed.  Looking at herself in the mirror she saw a pale plaintive little creature, without any freshness of beauty—­all the vitality seemed gone out of her.  Smoothing her ruffled hair, she twisted it up in a loose coil at the back of her head, and studied with melancholy dislike and pain the heavy effect of her dense black draperies against her delicate skin.

“I shall do for anything now,” she said—­“No one will look at me, and I shall pass quite unnoticed in a crowd.  I’m glad I’m not a pretty girl—­it might be more difficult to get on.  And Robin called me ‘lovely’ the other day!—­poor, foolish Robin!”

She went downstairs then to see if she could help Priscilla—­but Priscilla would not allow her to do anything in the way of what she called “chores.”

“No, lovey,” she said—­“you just keep quiet, an’ by-an’-bye you an’ me’ll ’ave a quiet tea together, for Mister Robin he’s gone off for the rest o’ the day an’ night with Mr. Bayliss, as there’s lots o’ things to see to, an’ ’e left you this little note”—­here Priscilla produced a small neatly folded paper from her apron pocke-t-"an’ sez ‘e—­’Give this to Miss Innocent`’ ’e sez, ‘an’ she won’t mind my bein’ out o’ the way—­it’ll be better for ’er to be quiet a bit with you’—­an’ so it will, lovey, for sometimes a man about the ‘ouse is a worrit an’ a burden, say what we will, an’ good though ’e be.”

Innocent took the note and read—­

“I have made up my mind to go with Bayliss into the town and stay at his house for the night—­there are many business matters we have to go into together, and it is important for me to thoroughly understand the position of my uncle’s affairs.  If I cannot manage to get back to-morrow, I will let you know.  Robin.”

She heaved a sigh of intense relief.  For twenty-four hours at least she was free from love’s importunity—­she could be alone to think, and to plan.  She turned to Priscilla with a gentle look and smile.

“I’ll go into the garden,” she said—­“and when it’s tea-time you’ll come and fetch me, won’t you?  I shall be near the old stone knight, Sieur Amadis—­”

“Oh, bother ’im,” muttered Priscilla, irrelevantly—­“You do think too much o’ that there blessed old figure!—­why, what’s ’e got to do with you, my pretty?”

“Nothing!” and the colour came to her pale cheeks for a moment, and then fled back again—­“He never had anything to do with me, really!  But I seem to know him.”