Chapter 17 - Page 2

happiness has been
good-natured so far. The observation will continue, but in time its
character will change. I see that before anything else."

"It is the first thing to be considered," she answered.

"The next--" she paused and thought seriously, "is her mother. Perhaps
Mrs. Gareth-Lawless has sharp eyes. She said to you something rather
vulgarly hideous about being glad her daughter was in my house and not
in hers."

"Her last words to Robin were to warn her not to come to her for refuge
'if she got herself into a mess.' She is in what Mrs. Gareth-Lawless
would call 'a mess.'"

"It is what a good many people would call it," the Duchess said. "And
she does not even know that her tragedy would express itself in a mere
vulgar colloquialism with a modern snigger in it. Presently, poor child,
when she awakens a little more she will begin to go about looking like a
little saint. Do you see that--as I do?"

She thought he did and that he was moved by it though he did not say so.

"I am thinking first of her mother. Mrs. Gareth-Lawless must see and
hear nothing. She is not a criminal or malignant creature, but her light
malice is capable of playing flimsily with any atrocity. She has not
brain enough to know that she can be atrocious. Robin can be protected
only if she is shut out of the whole affair. She was simply speaking the
truth when she warned the girl not to come to her in case of need."

"For a little longer I can keep her here," the Duchess said. "As she
looks ill it will not be unnatural that the doctor should advise me to
send her away from London. It is not possible to remember anything long
in the life we live now. She will be forgotten in a week. That part of
it will be simple."

"Yes," he answered. "Yes."

He paced the length of the room twice--three times and said nothing. She
watched him as he walked and she knew he was going to say more. She also
wondered what curious thing it might be. She had said to herself that
what he said and did would be entirely detached from ordinary or archaic
views. Also she had guessed that it might be extraordinary--perhaps as
extraordinary as his long intimacy with Mrs. Gareth-Lawless. Was there a
possibility that he was going to express himself now?

"But that is not all," he said at last and he ended his pondering walk
by coming nearer to her. He sat down and touched the newspapers lying on
the table.

"You have been poring over these," he said, "and I have been doing the
same thing. I have also been talking to the people who know things and
to those who ought to know them but