taken such care of and who was being sent away to be hidden in a
ruined castle whose existence was a forgotten thing. The good
respectable face told nothing but it seemed to be trying to keep itself
from looking too serious; and once Robin had thought that it looked as
if Dowie might suddenly have broken down if she would have allowed
herself but she would not allow herself.

The truth was that the two or three days at Eaton Square had been very
hard for Dowie to manage perfectly. To play her accepted part before her
fellow servants required much steady strength. They were all fond of
"poor little Miss Lawless" and had the tendency of their class to
discuss and dwell upon symptoms with sympathetic harrowingness of
detail. It seemed that all of them had had some friend or relative who
had "gone off in a quick decline. It's strange how many young people
do!" A head housemaid actually brought her heart into her throat one
afternoon by saying at the servants' hall tea:

"If she was one of the war brides, I should say she was just like my
cousin Lucy--poor girl. She and her husband were that fond of each other
that it was a pleasure to see them. He was killed in an accident. She
was expecting. And they'd been that happy. She went off in three
months. She couldn't live without him. She wasn't as pretty as Miss
Lawless, of course, but she had big brown eyes and it was the way they
looked that reminded me. Quick decline always makes people's eyes look
big and--just as poor little Miss Lawless does."

To sit and eat buttered toast quietly and only look normally sad and
slowly shake one's head and say, "Yes indeed. I know what you mean, Miss
Tompkins," was an achievement entitled to much respect.

The first night Dowie had put her charge to bed and had seen the faint
outline under the bedclothes and the sunken eyes under the pale closed
lids whose heaviness was so plain because it was a heaviness which had
no will to lift itself again and look at the morning, she could scarcely
bear her woe. As she dressed the child when morning came and saw the
delicate bones sharply denoting themselves, and the hollows in neck and
throat where smooth fairness had been, her hands almost shook as she
touched. And hardest of all to bear was the still, patient look in the
enduring eyes. She was being patient--_patient_, poor lamb, and only God
himself knew how she cried when she was left alone in her white bed, the
door closed between her and a