"She is too kind--too kind," said Robin. "Oh! _how_ kind to think of me like that. I will write and thank her." The sweet gratitude in her eyes and voice were touching. She could not speak steadily. "I may tell her then that you are well taken care of and that you are happy," the grey eyes were a shade less cold but still searching and steady. "You look--happy." "I never was so happy before. Please--please tell her that when you thank her for me," was Robin's quite yearning little appeal. She held out her hand to him for the first time in her life. "Thank you, Lord Coombe, for so kindly delivering her beautiful message." His perfect manner did not record any recognition on his part of the fact that she had done an unexpected thing. But as he went on his way he was thinking of it. "She is very happy for some reason," he thought. "Perhaps the rush and excitement of her new work exalts her. She has the ecstasied air of a lovely child on her birthday--with all her world filled with petting and birthday gifts." The Duchess evidently extended her care to the extent of sending special messages to Mrs. James, the housekeeper, who began to exercise a motherly surveillance over Robin's health and diet and warmly to advocate long walks and country visits to the cottage at Mersham Wood. "Her grace will be really pleased if you take a day or two while she's away. She's always been just that interested in those about her, Miss," Mrs. James argued. "She wouldn't like to come back and find you looking tired or pale. Not that there's much danger of that," quite beamingly. "For all your hard work, I must say you look--well, you look as I've never seen you. And you always had a colour like a new-picked rose." The colour like a new-picked rose ran up to the rings of hair on the girl's forehead as if she were made a little shy. "It is because her grace has been so good--and because every one is so kind to me," she said. "Kindness makes me happy." She was so happy that she was never tired and was regarded as a young wonder in the matter of work and readiness and exactitude. Her accounts, her correspondence, her information were always in order. When she took the prescribed walks and in some aloof path or corner met the strong, slim khaki-clad figure, they walked or stood or sat closely side by side and talked of many things--though most of all they dwelt on one. She could ask Donal questions and he could throw light on such things as young soldiers knew better than most people. She came into close touch--a shuddering touch sometimes it was--with needs and facts concerning marchings and trenches and attacks and was therefore able to visualise and to speak definitely of necessities not always understood. "How did you find that out?" little black-clad Lady Kathryn asked her one day. "I wish I had known it before George went away." "A soldier told me," was her answer. "Soldiers know things we don't."