ad once or
twice. Robin had always been somewhat too much of an old head on young
shoulders to please his uncle. To be sure, he had fed on Blue Books and
slept on statistics, yet his engagement to a lovely girl like Nelly
ought to have made him look happier. It was indecent in the
circumstances, that's what it was, that anybody, with the remotest
justification for the epithet, could call him careworn.

Once Robin on an afternoon when the House was not sitting called for his
cousin and carried her off in a hansom without saying where he was
taking her to. That was something of which the General heartily
approved. If Robin had done it oftener his opinion of him would have
gone up immensely. He rubbed his hands while he asked the Dowager what
Mrs. Grundy would say to such doings. "Supposing they made a runaway
match of it, ma'am, where should we be?" he asked cheerfully. To which
the Dowager replied that Robin would never think of anything so silly.
Why should he, when the wedding was fixed for the twenty-third and
everything ordered, even the bridesmaids' dresses and the wedding-cake?
"Perhaps for that reason," replied the General. But this was a dark
saying to the Dowager.

The visit that afternoon was to Mary Gray. Even Nelly had heard of the
book which Sir Michael Auberon had praised so highly, which the
newspapers had declared to be more interesting than any novel. She had
roused herself to be interested in the visit, to talk, to ask questions,
to look about her, as they drove into the east, instead of gazing
inwards with that introspective glance which had given her eyes of late
the beauty of mystery, making them larger and darker than they had been
in the old days.

She was exquisitely dressed, in a long cloak of cream lace over an
Indian muslin frock, and an airy hat of chiffon and feathers. She had
put on her best for her outing with Robin, her visit to Robin's friend.
It was one of the sweet things she was always doing, with an intention
in her own mind to make up for some lack or other which certainly her
lover had not felt. When she alighted in the busy street people stared
as though they had seen a white bird of Paradise; and coming into Mary
Gray's room with a basket of roses in her hand she looked like a bride.

Now, at least, she wore the pilgrim air. She looked curiously about the
unlikely place which housed the wonderful woman as she set down her
roses, then back at Mary herself. Mary had come to meet