his own immediate
succession rather than his father's death. He was grave, of course,
but there was a light in his eyes that Clare could not understand. Had
he some premonition of her request? He apologised for being late.

"I have been up most of the night. There is no immediate danger of a
change, but we ought, I think, to be ready. Yes, the toast, Robin,
please--I hope you've slept all right, Clare?"

How quickly he had picked up the manner, she reflected, as she watched
him! But of course that was natural enough; once a Trojan, always a
Trojan, and no amount of colonies will do away with it. But three
weeks was a short time for so vast a change.

"No, Harry, not very well--of course, it weighs on one rather."

She sighed and rose from the breakfast-table; she looked terribly tired
and Harry was suddenly sorry for her, and, for the first time since the
night of his return, felt that they were brother and sister; but after
the adventure of the early morning it was as though he were related to
the whole world--Love and Death had drawn close to him, and, with the
sound of the beating of their wings, the world had revealed things to
him that had, in other days, been secrets. Love and Death were such
big things that his personal relations with Clare, with Garrett, even
with Robin, had assumed their true proportion.

"Clare, you're tired!" he said. "I should go and lie down again. You
shall be told if anything happens."

"No, thanks, Harry. I wanted to ask you something--but, perhaps, first
I ought to apologise for some of the things that I said the other day.
I said more than I meant to. I am sorry--but one forgets at times that
one has no right to meddle in other people's affairs. But now
I--we--all of us--want to ask you a favour----"

"Yes?" he said, looking up.

"Well, of course, this is scarcely the time. But it is something that
can hardly wait, and you can decide about acting yourself----"

She paused. It was the very hardest thing that she had ever had to do,
and she would never forget it to the day of her death. But it was
harder for Robin; he sat there with flaming cheeks and his head
hanging--he could not look at his father.

"It is to do with Robin--" Clare went on; "he was rather afraid to ask
you about it himself, because, of course, it is not a business of which
he is very proud, and so he has asked me to do it for him. It is a
girl--a Miss Feverel--whom he met at Cambridge and