“Innocent!”

There was no answer.

He called a little louder—­

“Innocent!”

Still silence.  A robin hopped out from the cover of wet leaves and peered at him questioningly with its bold bright eye.  Acting on an irresistible impulse he set his foot on the gnarled root of the old wistaria and started to climb to the window-sill.  Three minutes sufficed him to reach it—­he looked into the little room, —­the room which had formerly been the study of the “Sieur Amadis de Jocelin”—­and there seated at the old oak table with her head bowed down upon her hands and her hair covering her as with a veil, was Innocent.  The sunlight flashed brightly in upon her—­and immediately above her the golden beams traced out as with a pencil of light the arms of the old French knight with the faded rose and blue of his shield and motto illumining with curiously marked distinctness the words he himself had carved beneath his own heraldic emblems: 

“Who here seekynge Forgetfulness Did here fynde Peace!”

She was very strangely still,—­and a cold fear suddenly caught at Robin’s heart and half choked his breath.

“Innocent!” he cried.  Then, leaping into the room like a man in sudden frenzy, he rushed towards that motionless little figure—­ threw his arms about it—­lifted it—­caressed it...

“Innocent!  Look at me!  Speak to me!”

The fair head fell passively back against his shoulder with all its wealth of rippling hair—­the fragile form he clasped was helpless, lifeless, breathless!—­and with a great shuddering sob of agony, he realised the full measure of his life’s despair.  Innocent was dead!—­and for her, as for the “Sieur Amadis,” the quaint words shining above her in the morning sunlight were aptly fitted—­

“Who here seekynge Forgetfulness Did here fynde Peace!”

. . . . . . .

Many things in life come too late to be of rescue or service, and justice is always tardy in arrival.  Too late was Pierce Armitage, after long years of absence, to give his innocent child the simple heritage of a father’s acknowledgment; he could but look upon her dead face and lay flowers on her in her little coffin.  The world heard of the sudden death of the young and brilliant writer with a faintly curious concern—­but soon forgot that she had ever existed.  No one knew, no one guessed the story of her love for the French painter, Amadis de Jocelyn—­he was abroad at the time of her death, and only three persons secretly connected him with the sorrow of her end—­and these were Lord Blythe, Miss Leigh and Robin Clifford.  Yet even these said nothing, restrained by the thought of casting the smallest scandal on the sweet lustre of her name.  And Amadis de Jocelyn himself?—­had he no regret?—­no pity?  If the truth must be told, he was more relieved than pained,—­more flattered than sorry!  The girl had died for him,—­well!—­that was more or less a pleasing result of his power!  She was a silly child—­obsessed by a “fancy”—­it was not his fault if he could not live up to that “fancy”—­he liked “facts.”  His picture of her was the success of the Salon that year, and he was admired and congratulated,—­this was enough for him.