oak table had a great pewter inkstand upon it and a few loose sheets of paper with two or three quill pens ready to hand,—­some quaint old vellum-bound volumes and a brown earthenware bowl full of “Glory” roses were set just where they could catch the morning sunshine through the lattice window.  One side of the room was lined with loaded bookshelves, and at its furthest end a wide arch of roughly hewn oak disclosed a smaller apartment where she slept.  Here there was a quaint little four-poster bedstead, hung with quite priceless Jacobean tapestry, and a still more rare and beautiful work of art—­an early Italian mirror, full length and framed in silver, a curio worth many hundreds of pounds.  In this mirror Innocent had surveyed herself with more or less disfavour since her infancy.  It was a mirror that had always been there—­a mirror in which the wife of the Sieur Amadis must have often gazed upon her own reflection, and in which, after her, all the wives and daughters of the succeeding Jocelyns had seen their charms presented to their own admiration.  The two old dower-chests which had been found in the upper chamber were placed on either side of the mirror, and held all the simple home-made garments which were Innocent’s only wear.  A special joy of hers lay in the fact that she knew the management of the secret sliding panel, and that she could at her own pleasure slip up the mysterious stairway with a book and be thus removed from all the household in a solitude which to her was ideal.  To-night as she wandered up and down her room like a little distraught ghost, all the happy and romantic associations of the home she had loved and cherished for so many years seemed cut down like a sheaf of fair blossoms by a careless reaper,—­a sordid and miserable taint was on her life, and she shuddered with mingled fear and grief as she realised that she had not even the simple privilege of ordinary baptism.  She was a nameless waif, dependent on the charity of Farmer Jocelyn.  True, the old man had grown to love her and she had loved him—­ah!—­let the many tender prayers offered up for him in this very room bear witness before the throne of God to her devotion to her “father” as she had thought him!  And now—­if what the doctors said was true—­if he was soon to die—­what would become of her?  She wrung her little hands in unconscious agony.

“What shall I do?” she murmured, sobbingly—­“I have no claim on him, or on anyone in the world!  Dear God, what shall I do?”

Her restless walk up and down took her into her sleeping-chamber, and there she lit a candle and looked at herself in the old Italian mirror.  A little woe-begone creature gazed sorrowfully back at her from its shining surface, with brimming eyes and quivering lips, and hair all tossed loosely away from a small sad face as pale as a watery moon, and she drew back from her own reflection with a gesture of repugnance.

“I am no use to anybody in any way,” she said, despairingly—­“I am not even good-looking.  And Robin—­poor foolish Robin!—­called me ‘lovely’ this afternoon!  He has no eyes!”