soul as well as mine. I kissed the hem of her dress and
left her standing--alone."

After a silence he added:

"It was the next night that I heard her shrieks. Then she died."

The Duchess knew what else had died: the high adventure of youth and joy
of life in him.

On a table beside her winged chair were photographs of two women, who,
while obviously belonging to periods of some twenty years apart, were in
face and form so singularly alike that they might have been the same
person. One was the Princess Alixe of X---- and the other--Feather.

"The devil of chance," Coombe said, "sometimes chooses to play tricks.
Such a trick was played on me."

It was the photograph of Feather he took up and set a strange
questioning gaze upon.

"When I saw this," he said, "this--exquisitely smiling at me in a sunny
garden--the tomb opened under my feet and I stood on the brink of
it--twenty-five again."

He made clear to her certain facts which most persons would have
ironically disbelieved. He ended with the story of Robin.

"I am determined," he explained, "to stand between the child and what
would be inevitable. Her frenzy of desire to support herself arises from
her loathing of the position of accepting support from me. I sympathise
with her entirely."

"Mademoiselle Valle is an intelligent woman," the Duchess said. "Send
her to me; I shall talk to her. Then she can bring the child."

And so it was arranged that Robin should be taken into the house in the
old fashioned square to do for the Duchess what a young relative might
have done. And, a competent person being needed to take charge of the
linen, "Dowie" would go to live under the same roof.

Feather's final thrust in parting with her daughter was:

"Donal Muir is a young man by this time. I wonder what his mother would
do now if he turned up at your mistress' house and began to make love to
you." She laughed outright. "You'll get into all sorts of messes but
that would be the nicest one!"

* * * * *

The Duchess came to understand that Robin held it deep in her mind that
she was a sort of young outcast.

"If she consorted," she thought, "with other young things and shared
their pleasures she would forget it."

She talked the matter over with her daughter, Lady Lothwell.

"I am not launching a girl in society," she said, "I only want to help
her to know a few nice young people. I shall begin with your children.
They are mine