d come in and
altered the constituents of Nelly's baby bottles, and had infuriated
Nelly's wholesome country nurse to the point of departure. The General
had come just in time then to find Mrs. Loveday fastening the
cherry-coloured strings of her bonnet with fingers that trembled, and
had been put to the very edge of his simple diplomacy to undo the
Dowager's work. He knew his own helplessness where women were concerned.
Nelly might see something in Robin, confound him, that the General could
not.

At this point he would remember that, after all, Robin was poor Gerald's
son, if an unworthy one, and be contrite. But then the grievance would
revive of a far-back Quaker ancestor of Lady Drummond, whom the General
blamed for the peace-loving instincts of poor Gerald's boy; and once
again he would be furious.

Meanwhile, Nelly's frank, innocent eyes, blue as gentians, had no
consciousness of a lover. Her old father seemed to be enough for her. At
one moment they gave him the fullest assurance; the next he was in heats
and colds of apprehension about the lover, be it Robin or another, who
would take his little girl from him.

CHAPTER VI

THE BLUE RIBBON

The half-dozen years or so following Sir Denis's retirement were years
of peace, in which he forgot for long periods, broken only by the
Dowager's visits to London, his fear of losing his Nelly.

He had taken a house in Sherwood Square, where there is a space and
breeziness that the fashionable districts could not possibly allow.

The square sits on top of one of the highest hills in London, and
entrenches itself as a fortress against the poverty and squalor that are
creeping up the hill towards it. Around the square there are still
gardens and crescents and roads of consideration, but ever dwindling in
social status as one goes down the hill, till the consideration vanishes
in the degradation of cheap boarding-houses and the homes of Jews of the
shopkeeping classes.

Sir Denis had discovered Sherwood Square for himself, and was uncommonly
proud of it. He liked to point out to his friends that he rented a
palatial mansion for what a _pied-a-terre_ in Mayfair would have cost
him. The houses had been built by wealthy merchants and professional
people in the eighteenth century. They had splendours of double doors
and marble pavements, of frescoed walls and ceilings, and carved
mantelpieces. They were entered from a quiet street which showed hardly
a sign of li