xpression of creatures with work in view. Slim young war-widows were to
be seen in black dresses and veiled small hats with bits of white crape
inside their brims. Sometimes their little faces were awful to behold,
but sometimes they wore a strained look of exaltation.

The Dowager Duchess of Darte was often absent from Eaton Square. She was
understood to be proving herself much stronger than her friends had
supposed her to be. She proved it by doing an extraordinary amount of
work. She did it in her house in Eaton Square--in other people's houses,
in her various estates in the country, where she prepared her villagers
and tenants for a future in which every farm house and cottage must be
as ready for practical service as her own castle or manor house. Darte
Norham was no longer a luxurious place of residence but a potential
hospital for wounded soldiers; so was Barons Court and the beautiful old
Dower House at Malworth.

Sometimes Robin was with her, but oftener she remained at Eaton Square
and wrote letters and saw busy people and carried out lists of orders.

It was not every day or evening that she could easily find time to go
out alone and make her way to the Square Gardens and in fact it was not
often to the Gardens she went. There were so many dear places where
trees grew and made quiet retreats--all the parks and heaths and green
suburbs--and everywhere pairs walked or sat and talked, and were frankly
so wholly absorbed in the throb of their own existences that they had no
interest in, or curiosity concerning, any other human beings.

"Ought I to ask you to come and meet me--as if you were a little
housemaid meeting her life-guardsman?" Donal had said feverishly the
second time they met.

A sweet flush ran up to the roots of her hair and even showed itself on
the bit of round throat where her dress was open.

"Yes, you ought," she answered. "There are no little housemaids and
life-guardsmen now. It seems as if there were only--people."

The very sound of her voice thrilled him--everything about her thrilled
him--the very stuff her plain frock was made of, the small hat she wore,
her way of moving or quiet sitting down near him, but most of all the
lift of her eyes to his--because there was no change in it and the eyes
expressed what they had expressed when they had first looked at him. It
was a thing which moved him to-day exactly as it had moved him when he
was too young to explain its meaning and appeal.