"Carnaby's wife!" thought Robinette. "Why! she mayn't be born! He may never have a wife! And to think of all those precious stones hiding their brightness in these boxes like prisoners in a dungeon for years and years, only to be let out now and then by Bates and Benson, jingling their keys like jailers! And this house is a prison too!" she said to herself; "a prison for souls!" and the thought of its hoarded wealth made her indignant; all this hidden treasure in a house where there was never enough to eat, where guests shivered in fireless bedrooms, where servants would not stay because they were starved! And Carnaby, too, whose youth was being embittered by unnecessary economies: Carnaby, who had so little pocket-money that he was a laughing-stock among his fellows--it was for Carnaby these sacrifices were being made! Strange traditions! Fetiches of family pride almost as grotesque to her thinking as those of any savages under the sun. "My poor dear Middy!" she thought. "What chance has he, brought up in an atmosphere like this?" But she happened to raise her eyes at the moment, and to see the actual Carnaby of the moment, not the Carnaby her gloomy imagination was evoking from the future with the "petty hoard of maxims preaching down" his heart. He had contrived to get hold of the Marie Antoinette pearls without his grandmother's knowledge and to hang them around his neck; he had poised the Montmorency tiara on his own sleek head; he had forced a heavy bracelet by way of collar round Rupert's throat, and now with that choking and goggling unfortunate held partner-wise in his arms, he was waltzing on tiptoe about the farther drawing room behind the unconscious backs of Mrs. de Tracy and Miss Smeardon. "He's only a careless boy," thought Robinette, "a happy-go-lucky, devil-may-care, hare-brained youngster. They can't have poisoned his nature yet, and I'm sure he has a good heart. If he were at the head of affairs at Stoke Revel instead of his grandmother, I wonder what would be done in the matter of my poor old nurse?" Robinette stood in the doorway for a moment before going up to her room. Her whole attitude spoke depression as Carnaby stole up behind her. "See here, Cousin Robin, I can't bear to have you go on like this. Don't take Prettyman's trouble so to heart. We'll do something! I'll do something myself! I have a happy thought." XIX LAWYER AND CLIENT Robinette had a bad night after the jewel exhibition, and a heavy head and aching eyes prompted her to ask Little Cummins to bring her breakfast to her bedroom. It was touching to see that small person hovering over Robinette: stirring the fire, sweeping the hearth, looping back the curtains, tucking the slippers out of sight, and moving about the room like a mother ministering to an ailing child. Finally she staggered in with the heavy breakfast tray that she had carried through long halls and up the stairs, and put it on the table by the bed.