ted.

"Oh, my goodness! Aunt Sarah Ann! I feel all shaky. I never saw a
lord--and he's a marquis, isn't it? I shan't know what to do."

"You won't have to do anything," answered Dowie. "He'll only say what
he's come to say and go away."

She went out of the room as quickly as she had come into it because she
heard the sound of the cheap little door knocker. She was pale with
anxiety when she opened the door and Lord Coombe saw her troubled look
and understood its reason.

"I am afraid I have rather alarmed you, Dowie," he said as he stepped
into the narrow lobby and shook hands with her.

"It's not bad news of her grace or Miss Robin?" she faltered.

"I have come to ask you to come back to London. Her grace is well but
Miss Robin needs you," was what he said.

But Dowie knew the words did not tell her everything she was to hear.
She took him into the parlour for which she realised he was much too
tall. When she discreetly closed the door after he had entered, he said
seriously, "Thank you," before he seated himself. And she knew that this
meant that they must be undisturbed.

"Will you sit down too," he said as she stood a moment waiting
respectfully. "We must talk together."

She took a chair opposite to him and waited respectfully again. Yes, he
had something grave on his mind. He had come to tell her something--to
ask her questions perhaps--to require something of her. Her superiors
had often required things of her in the course of her experience--such
things as they would not have asked of a less sensible and reliable
woman. And she had always been ready.

When he began to talk to her he spoke as he always did, in a tone which
sounded unemotional but held one's attention. But his face had changed
since she had last seen it. It had aged and there was something
different in the eyes. That was the War. Since the War began so many
faces had altered.

During the years in the slice of a house he had never talked to her very
much. It was with Mademoiselle he had talked and his interviews with her
had not taken place in the nursery. How was it then that he seemed to
know her so well. Had Mademoiselle told him that she was a woman to be
trusted safely with any serious and intimate confidence--that being
given any grave secret to shield, she would guard it as silently and
discreetly as a great lady might guard such a thing if it were personal
to her own family--as her grace herself might guard it. That he knew
t