e and her
father were well.

"Shall I stay the night?" she asked. "Your cousin was so very anxious
that I should come and stay with her. She showed me the room I should
have--next to hers. Sir Denis seconded the invitation warmly. I said
that I would try to come."

"It will be the best thing in the world. How long will you take to get
ready? I have a hansom at the door."

"Five minutes."

She came down the stairs in four and a half minutes. Robin had been
expeditious; it yet wanted twenty minutes to ten by his watch.

He helped her into the hansom, got in himself and placed her little bag
at their feet. The hansom turned up the hill. She waited for him to
speak.

"Nelly has found out that she made a mistake," he said quietly. "Her
heart was not given to me, but to a Captain Langrishe of her father's
old regiment. News has come that he has been badly wounded, so badly
that in all probability he is dead by this time. He had exchanged into
an Indian regiment, and almost as soon as he got out he was sent into
the hills on the business of this wretched little war. Those conquests
of ours, what they cost us! Why should we have all those thousands of
miles of frontiers to defend? Why can't we stay at home and let the
territories be for their own people?"

She smiled quietly to herself in the corner of the cab. The sudden
excursion into politics was so characteristic of him.

The wind of the summer night came cool and friendly in their faces. The
blue heaven was studded with stars. A little half-moon hung above the
quiet shadows of the square through which they were passing. For the
stillness they might have been miles away from London.

"What a Don Quixote you are!" she said. "I believe you would cede India
if you had your way."

"I believe I should. Don't you wonder at me, Miss Gray? My forbears
devoted their existence chiefly to extending the boundaries of the
British Empire. Am I not their degenerate descendant?"

"Oh, you're a fighting man in other ways. You don't mind facing a
hostile audience and saying unpalatable things to them. Mr. Ilbert says
you'll have to fight for your seat at the next election."

"I wouldn't be bothered with a seat I hadn't to fight for. All the same,
I'm obliged to Ilbert for his interest in my affairs. Do you know that
he referred to me as a Little Englander the other night, as though there
were only one way of loving one's country and that to rob other people
of theirs?"

His