"Hullo! Cousin Robin, hurry up, you'll need all your time!" It was Carnaby of course who saluted Robinette thus, as she came towards the house on her return from Wittisham.

"I'm not late, am I?" she said, consulting her watch.

"I thought you'd be making a tremendous toilette; one of your killing ones to-night," Carnaby said. "Do! I love to see you all dressed up till old Smeardon's eyes look as if they would drop out when you come into the room."

"I'll wear my black dress, and her eyes may remain in her head," Robinette laughed.

"And what about Mark's eyes? Wouldn't you like them to drop out?" the boy asked mischievously. "He's come back by the afternoon train while you were away at Wittisham."

"Oh, has he?" Robinette said, and Carnaby stared so hard at her, that to her intense annoyance she blushed hotly.

"Horrid lynx-eyed boy," she said to herself as she ran upstairs, "He's growing up far too quickly. He needs to be snubbed." She dashed to the wardrobe, pulled out the black garment, and gave it a vindictive shake. "Old, dowdy, unbecoming, deaconess-district-visitor-bible-woman, great-grand-auntly thing!" she cried.

Then her eye lighted on a cherished lavender satin. She stood for a moment deliberating, the black dress over her arm, her eyes fixed upon the lavender one that hung in the wardrobe.

"I don't care," she cried suddenly: "I'll wear the lavender, so here goes! Men are all colour blind, so he'll merely notice that I look nice. I must conceal from myself and everybody else how depressed I am over the interview with Nurse, and how I dread discussing the cottage with Aunt de Tracy. That must be done the first thing after dinner, or I shall lose what little courage I have."

Lavendar thought he had never seen her look so lovely as when he met her in the drawing room a quarter of an hour later. There was nothing extraordinary about the dress but its exquisite tint and the sheen of the soft satin. The suggestion that lay in the colour was entirely lost upon him, however: if asked to name it he would doubtless have said "purplish." How he wished that he might have escorted her into the dining room, but Mrs. de Tracy was his portion as usual, and Robinette was waiting for Carnaby, who seemed unaccountably slow.

"Your arm, Middy, when you are quite ready," she said to him at last. Carnaby's extraordinary unreadiness seemed to arise from his trying to smuggle some object up his sleeve. This proved, a few moments later, to be a bundle of lavender sticks tied with violet ribbon that he had discovered in his bureau drawer. He laid it by Robinette's plate with a whispered "My compliments."

"What does your cousin want that bunch of lavender for, at the table?" Mrs. de Tracy enquired.

"She likes lavender anywhere, ma'am," Carnaby said with a wink on the side not visible by his grandmother. "It's a favourite of hers."

Robinette could only be thankful that Lavendar was occupied in a _sotto voce_ discussion of wine with Bates, and she was able to conceal the bundle of herbs before his eyes met hers, for the fury she felt against her precious young kinsman at that moment she could have expressed only by blows.

Dinner seemed interminably long. Robinette, for more reasons than one, was preoccupied; Lavendar made few remarks, and Carnaby was possessed by a spirit of perfectly fiendish mischief, saying and doing everything that could most exasperate his grandmother, put her guests to the blush, and shock Miss Smeardon.

But at last Mrs. de Tracy rose from the table, and the ladies followed her from the room, leaving Lavendar to cope alone with Carnaby.

"My fair American cousin is more than usually lovely to-night, eh, Mr. Lavendar?" the boy said, with his laughable assumption of a man of the world.

"There, my young friend; that will do! you're talking altogether too much," said Lavendar, as he poured himself out a glass of wine and sat down by the open window to drink it. Carnaby, perhaps not unreasonably offended, lounged out of the room, and left the older man to his own meditations.

Robinette in the meantime went into the drawing room with her aunt, and they sat down together in the dim light while Miss Smeardon went upstairs to write a letter.

"Aunt de Tracy," Robinette began, "I was calling on Mrs. Prettyman just after you had been with her this afternoon, and do you know the dear old soul had taken the strangest idea into her head! She says you are going to ask her to leave the cottage."

"The land on which her cottage stands is about to be sold," said Mrs. de Tracy. "It is necessary that she should move."

"Yes, she quite understood that; but she thinks she is not going to get another house; that was what was distressing her, naturally. Of course she hates to leave the old place, but I believe if she gets another nicer cottage, that will quite console her," said Robinette quickly.

"I have no vacant cottage on the estate just now," said Mrs. de Tracy quietly.

"Then what is she to do? Isn't it impossible that she should move until another place is made ready for her?" Robinette rose and stood beside the table, leaning the tips of her fingers on it in an attitude of intense earnestness. She was trying to conceal the anger and dismay she felt at her aunt's reply.

"Mrs. Prettyman has relatives at Exeter," said Mrs. de Tracy without the quiver of an eyelid.

"Yes; but they are poor. They aren't very near relations, and they don't want her. O Aunt de Tracy, is it necessary to make her leave? She depends upon the plum tree so! She makes twenty-five dollars a year from the jam!"

"Dollars have no significance for me," said Mrs. de Tracy with an icy smile.

"Well, pounds then: five pounds she makes. How is she ever going to live without that, unless you give her the equivalent? It's half her livelihood! I promised you would consider it? Was I wrong?"

Old bitternesses rose in Mrs. de Tracy's heart, the prejudices and the grudges of a lifetime. Everything connected with Robinette's mother had been wrong in her eyes, and now everything connected with Robinette was wrong too, and becoming more so with startling rapidity.

"You had no right whatsoever to make any promises on my behalf," she now said harshly. "You have acted foolishly and officiously. This is no business of yours."

"I'll gladly make it my business if you'll let me, Aunt de Tracy!" pleaded Robinette. "If you don't feel inclined to provide for Mrs. Prettyman, mayn't I? She is my mother's old nurse and she shan't want for anything as long as I have a penny to call my own!" Robinette's eyes filled with tears, but Mrs. de Tracy was not a whit moved by this show of emotion, which appeared to her unnecessary and theatrical.

"You are forgetting yourself a good deal in your way of speaking to me on this subject," she said coldly. "When I behaved unbecomingly in my youth, my mother always recommended me to go upstairs, shut myself up alone in my room, and collect my thoughts. The process had invariably a calming effect. I advise you to try it."

Robinette did not need to be proffered the hint twice. She rushed out of the room like ............