Chapter 20

No immediate change was made in her life during the days that followed.
She sat at her desk, writing letters, referring to notes and lists and
answering questions as sweetly and faithfully as she had always done
from the first. She tried to remember every detail and she also tried to
keep before her mind that she must not let people guess that she was
thinking of other things--or rather trying not to think of them. It was
as though she stood guard over a dark background of thought, of which
others must know nothing. It was a background which belonged to herself
and which would always be there. Sometimes when she lifted her eyes she
found the Duchess looking at her and then she realised that the Duchess
knew it was there too.

She began to notice that almost everybody looked at her in a kindly
slightly troubled way. Very important matrons and busy excited girls who
ran in and out on errands had the same order of rather evasive glance.

"You have no cough, my dear, have you?" more than one amiable grand lady
asked her.

"No, thank you--none at all," Robin answered and she was nearly always
patted on the shoulder as her questioner left her.

Kathryn sitting by her desk one morning, watching her as she wrote a
note, suddenly put her hand out and stopped her.

"Let me look at your wrist, Robin," she said and she took it between her
fingers.

"Oh! What a little wrist!" she exclaimed. "I--I am sure Grandmamma has
not seen it. Grandmamma--" aloud to the Duchess, "_Have_ you seen
Robin's wrist? It looks as if it would snap in two."

There were only three or four people in the room and they were all
intimates and looked interested.

"It is only that I am a little thin," said Robin. "Everybody is thinner
than usual. It is nothing."

The Duchess' kind look somehow took in those about her in her answer.

"You are too thin, my dear," she said. "I must tell you frankly,
Kathryn, that you will be called upon to take her place. I am going to
send her away into the wilds. The War only ceases for people who are
sent into wild places. Dr. Redcliff is quite fixed in that opinion.
People who need taking care of must be literally hidden away in corners
where war vibrations cannot reach them. He has sent Emily Clare away and
even her friends do not know where she is."

Later in the day Lady Lothwell came and in the course of a few minutes
drew near to her mother and sat by her chair rather closely. She spoke
in a lowered voice.

"I am so glad, mamma darling, that you are going to send poor little
Miss Lawless into retreat for a rest cure," she began. "It's so tactless