Sometimes George and the Duchess forgot her because she was so quiet--people often forgot everything but their excitement and wrath--and every one who came in to talk, because the house had become a centre of activities, was full of new panics or defiances or rumours of happenings or possibilities. The maelstrom had caught Robin herself in its whirling. She realised that she had changed with the rest. She was no longer only a girl who was looked at as she passed along the street and who was beginning to be happy because she could earn her living. What was every girl in these days? How did any girl know what lay before her and those who protected the land she lived in? What could a girl do but try in some way to help--in any way to help the fight and the fighters. She used to lie awake and think of the Duchess' plans and concentrate her thought on the mastering of details. There was no hour too early or too late to find her ready to spring to attention. The Duchess had set her preparations for future possibilities in train before other women had quite begun to believe in their existence. Lady Lothwell had at first laughed quite gaily at certain long lists she found her mother occupied with--though this, it is true, was in early days. But Robin, even while whirled by the maelstrom, could not cease thinking certain vague remote thoughts. The splashing of fountains among flowers, and the sound of music and dancing were far away--but there was an echo to which she listened unconsciously as Donal Muir did. Something she gave no name to. But as the, as yet unheard, guns sent forth vibrations which reached far, there rose before her pictures of columns of marching men--hundreds, thousands, young, erect, steady and with clear eyes--marching on and on--to what--to what? Would _every_ man go? Would there not be some who, for reasons, might not be obliged--or able--or ready--until perhaps the, as yet hoped for, sudden end of the awful thing had come? Surely there would be many who would be too young--or whose youth could not be spared because it stood for some power the nation needed in its future. She had taken out and opened the lacquered box while thinking these things. She was thinking them as she looked at the key in her hand. "It is not quiet anywhere now," she said to herself. "But there will be some corner under a tree in the Gardens where it will _seem_ quiet if one sits quite still there. I will go and try." There were very few nursemaids with their charges in the place when she reached it about an hour later. The military element filling the streets engendered a spirit of caution with regard to nursemaids in the minds of their employers. Even those who were not young and good-looking were somewhat shepherded. The two or three quite elderly ones in the Gardens cast serious glances at the girl who walked past them to a curve in the path where large lilac bushes and rhododendrons made a sort of nook for a seat under a tree.