for those who needed yet could not afford them,—­a new drawing-room carpet for Miss Leigh, which was, in the old lady’s opinion, a most important and amazing affair!—­costly furs, also for Miss Leigh,—­ and devices and adornments of all sorts for the pleasure, beauty or comfort of the house—­but on herself personally she spent nothing save what was necessary for such dress and appearance as best accorded with her now acknowledged position.  Dearly as she would have loved to shower gifts and benefits on the inhabitants of never-forgotten Briar Farm, she knew that if she did anything of the kind poor lonely old Priscilla Friday and patiently enduring Robin Clifford were more likely to be hurt than gratified.  For a silence had fallen between that past life, which had been like a wild rose blossoming in a country lane, and the present one, which resembled a wonderful orchid flower, flaming in heat under glass,—­and though she wrote to Robin now and again, and he replied, his letters were restrained and formal—­almost cold.  He knew too well how far she was removed from him by more than distance, and bravely contented himself with merely giving her such news of the farm and her former home surroundings as might awaken her momentary interest without recalling too many old memories to her mind.

She seemed, and to a very great extent she was, unconscious of the interest and curiosity both her work and her personality excited—­ the more so now as the glamour and delight of her creative imagination had been obscured by what she considered a far greater and more lasting glory—­that of love!—­the golden mirage of a fancied sun, which for a time had quenched the steadier shining of eternal stars.  Since that ever memorable night when he had suddenly stormed the fortress of her soul, and by the mastery of a lover’s kiss had taken full possession, Amadis de Jocelyn had pursued his “amour” with admirable tact, cleverness and secrecy.  He found a new and stimulating charm in making love to a tender-hearted, credulous little creature who seemed truly “of such stuff as dreams are made of”—­and to a man of his particular type and temperament there was an irresistible provocation to his vanity in the possibility of being able to lure her gradually and insidiously down from the high ground of intellectual ambition and power to the low level of that pitiful sex-submission which is responsible for so much more misery than happiness in this world.  Little by little, under his apparently brusque and playful, but really studied training, she began to think less and less of her work,—­the books she had loved to read and refer to, insensibly lost their charm,—­she went reluctantly to her desk, and as reluctantly took up her pen,—­what she had written already, appeared to her utterly worthless,—­and what she attempted to write now was to her mind poor and unsatisfying.  She was not moved by the knowledge, constantly pressed upon her, that she was steadily rising, despite herself, to the zenith of her career