Priscilla gave a kind of melancholy snort—­and the girl moved slowly away through the open door and beyond it, out among the radiant flowers.  Her little figure in deep black was soon lost to sight, and after watching her for a minute, Priscilla turned to her home-work with tears blinding her eyes so thickly that she could scarcely see.

“If she winnot take Mister Robin, the Lord knows what’ll become of ‘er!” sighed the worthy woman—­“For she’s as lone i’ the world as a thrush fallen out o’ the nest before it’s grown strong enough to fly!  Eh, we thort we did a good deed, Mister Jocelyn an’ I, when we kep’ ’er as a baby, ‘opin’ agin ’ope as ’er parents ’ud turn up an’ be sorry for the loss of ‘er—­but never a sign of a soul!—­an’ now she’s grow’d up she’s thorts in ’er ’ed which ain’t easy to unnerstand—­for since Mister Jocelyn told ’er the tale of ’erself she’s not been the same like—­she’s got suddin old!”

The afternoon was very peaceful and beautiful—­the sun shone warmly over the smooth meadows of Briar Farm, and reddened the apples in the orchard yet a little more tenderly, flashing in flecks of gold on the “Glory” roses, and touching the wings of fluttering doves with arrowy silver gleams.  No one looking at the fine old house, with its picturesque gables and latticed windows, would have thought that its last master of lawful lineage was dead and buried, and that the funeral had taken place that morning.  Briar Farm, though more than three centuries old, seemed full of youthful life and promise—­a vital fact, destined to outlast many more human lives than those which in the passing of three hundred years had already left their mark upon it, and it was strange and incredible to realise that the long chain of lineally descended male ancestors had broken at last, and that no remaining link survived to carry on the old tradition.  Sadly and slowly Innocent walked across the stretches of warm clover-scented grass to the ancient tomb of the “Sieur Amadis”—­and sat down beside it, not far from the place where so lately she had sat with Robin—­what a change had come over her life since then!  She watched the sun sinking towards the horizon in a mellow mist of orange-coloured radiance,—­the day was drawing to an end—­the fateful, wretched day which had seen the best friend she had ever known, and whom for years she had adored and revered as her own “father,” laid in the dust to perish among perishable things.

“I wish I had died instead of him,” she said, half aloud—­“or else that I had never been born!  Oh, dear ’Sieur Amadis’!—­you know how hard it is to live in the world unless some one wants you—­unless some one loves you!—­and no one wants me—­no one loves me—­except Robin!”

Solitary, and full of the heaviest sadness, she tried to think and to form plans—­but her mind was tired, and she could come to no decisive resolution beyond the one all-convincing necessity—­that of leaving Briar Farm.  Of course she must go,—­there was no other alternative.  And now, thanks to Hugo Jocelyn’s forethought in giving her money for her bridal “pretties,” no financial difficulty stood in the way of her departure.  She must go—­but where?  To begin with, she had no name.  She would have to invent one for herself—­