Meanwhile on Briar Farm there had fallen a cloud of utter desolation. The day was fair and brilliant with summer sunshine, the birds sang, the roses bloomed, the doves flew to and fro on the gabled roof, and Innocent's pet "Cupid" waited in vain on the corner of her window-sill for the usual summons that called it to her hand,--but a strange darkness and silence like a whelming wave submerged the very light from the eyes of those who suddenly found themselves deprived of a beloved presence--a personality unobtrusively sweet, which had bestowed on the old house a charm and grace far greater than had been fully recognised. The "base-born" Innocent, nameless, and unbaptised, and therefore shadowed by the stupid scandal of commonplace convention, had given the "home" its homelike quality--her pretty idealistic fancies about the old sixteenth-century knight "Sieur Amadis" had invested the place with a touch of romance and poetry which it would hardly have possessed with-out her--her gentle ways, her care of the flowers and the animals, and the never-wearying delight she had taken in the household affairs--all her part in the daily life of the farm had been as necessary to happiness as the mastership of Hugo Jocelyn himself--and without her nothing seemed the same. Poor Priscilla went about her work, crying silently, and Robin Clifford paced restlessly up and down the smooth grass in front of the old house with Innocent's farewell letter in his hand, reading it again and again. He had returned early from the market town where he had stayed the night, eager to explain to her all the details of the business he had gone through with the lawyer to whom his Uncle Hugo had entrusted his affairs, and to tell her how admirably everything had been arranged for the prosperous continuance of Briar Farm on the old traditional methods of labour by which it had always been worked to advantage. Hugo Jocelyn had indeed shown plenty of sound wisdom and foresight in all his plans save one--and that one was his fixed idea of Innocent's marriage with his nephew. It had evidently never occurred to him that a girl could have a will of her own in such a momentous affair--much less that she could or would be so unwise as to refuse a good husband and a settled home when both were at hand for her acceptance. Robin himself, despite her rejection of him, had still hoped and believed that when the first shock of his uncle's death had lessened, he might by patience and unwearying tenderness move her heart to softer yielding, and he had meant to plead his cause with her for the sake of the famous old house itself, so that she might become its mistress and help him to prove a worthy descendant of its long line of owners. But now! All hope was at an end--she had taken the law into her own hands and gone--no one knew whither. Priscilla was the last who had seen her--Priscilla could only explain, with many tears, that when she had gone to call her to breakfast she had found her room