ho has entered a haven and has found the
desired peace. She had given up something, but how much had been given
to her! In the shelter of the gray towers, and within the enclosing
walls, she would go again to some of her dreams, while the chimes marked
the passing of the quiet hours, and the watchman's voice was lifted up
to the stars which looked down on Welsley.

And Robin would be with her.

CHAPTER IV

A little more than six months later, when a golden September lay over
the land, Rosamund could scarcely believe that she had ever lived out of
Welsley. Dion was still in South Africa, in good health and "without a
scratch." In his last letter home he had written that he had no idea how
long the C.I.V.'s would be kept in South Africa. The war dragged on, and
despite the English successes which had followed such bitter defeats
no one could say when it would end. There was no immediate reason,
therefore, for Rosamund to move back to London.

She dreaded that return. She loved Welsley and could not now imagine
herself living anywhere else. Robin, too was a pronounced, even an
enthusiastic, "Welsleyite," and had practically forgotten "old London,"
as he negligently called the greatest city in the world. They were
very happy in Welsley. In fact, the Dean's widow was the only rift in
Rosamund's lute, that lute which was so full of sweet and harmonious
music.

Rosamund's lease of the house in the Precincts, "Little Cloisters," as
it was deliciously named, had been for six months, from the 1st of March
till the 1st of September. As Dion was not coming home yet, and as he
wrote begging her to live on at Welsley if she preferred it to London,
she was anxious to "renew" for another six months. The question whether
Mrs. Duncan Browning would, or would not, renew really tormented
Rosamund, and the uncertainty in which she was living, and the misery it
caused her, showed her how much of her heart had been given to Welsley.

The Dean's widow was capricious and swayed by fluctuations of health.
She was "up and down," whatever that betokened. At one moment she "saw
the sun,"--her poetical way of expressing that she began to feel pretty
well,--and thought she had had enough of the "frivolous existence one
leads in an hotel"; at another a fit of sneezing,--"was not the early
morning sneeze but the real thing,"--a pang of rheumatism, or a touch
of bronchitis, made her fear for the damp of Welsley. She would and she
would not, a