“She grows prettier every day,” she thought—­“But not happier, I fear!—­not happier, poor child!”

Innocent meanwhile, upstairs in her own little study, was reading and re-reading a brief letter which had come for her by the same post that had delivered the Duchess’s invitation.

“I hear you are among the guests invited to the Duchess of Deanshire’s party,” it ran—­“I hope you will go—­for the purely selfish reason that I want to meet you there.  Hers is a great house with plenty of room, and a fine garden—­for London.  People crowd to her ‘crushes’, but one can always escape the mob.  I have seen so little of you lately, and you are now so famous that I shall think myself lucky if I may touch the hem of your garment.  Will you encourage me thus far?  Like Hamlet, ‘I lack advancement’!  When will you take me to Briar Farm?  I should like to see the tomb of my very ancestral uncle—­could we not arrange a day’s outing in the country while the weather is fine?  I throw myself on your consideration and clemency for this—­and for many other unwritten things!

Yours,

Amadis de Jocelyn.”

There was nothing in this easily worded scrawl to make an ordinarily normal heart beat faster, yet the heart of this simple child of the gods, gifted with genius and deprived of worldly wisdom as all such divine children are, throbbed uneasily, and her eyes were wet.  More than this, she touched the signature,—­the long-familiar name—­with her soft lips,—­and as though afraid of what she had done, hurriedly folded the letter and locked it away.

Then she sat down and thought.  Nearly two years had elapsed since she had left Briar Farm, and in that short time she had made the name she had adopted famous.  She could not call it her own name; born out of wedlock, she had no right, by the stupid law, to the name of her father.  She could, legally, have worn the maiden name of her mother had she known it—­but she did not know it.  And what she was thinking of now, was this:  Should she tell her lately discovered second “Amadis de Jocelyn” the true story of her birth and parentage at this, the outset of their friendship, before—­ well, before it went any further?  She could not consult Miss Leigh on the point, without smirching the reputation of Pierce Armitage, the man whose memory was enshrined in that dear lady’s heart as a thing of unsullied honour.  She puzzled herself over the question for a long time, and then decided to keep her own counsel.

“After all, why should I tell him?” she asked herself.  “It might make trouble—­he is so proud of his lineage, and I too am proud of it for him! ... why should I let him know that I inherit nothing but my mother’s shame!”