He fell over sidewise on to the cushions so helplessly that Feather sprang at him. “Don’t, Rob, don’t!” she cried in actual anguish. “Lord Coombe is taking us to the opera and to supper afterwards. I’m going to wear—” She stopped speaking to shake him and try to lift his head. “Oh! do try to sit up,” she begged pathetically. “Just try. _Don’t_ give up till afterwards.” But she could neither make him sit up nor make him hear. He lay back heavily with his mouth open, breathing stertorously and quite insensible. It happened that the Head of the House of Coombe was announced at that very moment even as she stood wringing her hands over the sofa. He went to her side and looked at Gareth-Lawless. “Have you sent for a doctor?” he inquired. “He’s—only just done it!” she exclaimed. “It’s more than I can bear. You said the Prince would be at the supper after the opera and—” “Were you thinking of going?” he put it to her quietly. “I shall have to send for a nurse of course—” she began. He went so far as to interrupt her. “You had better not go—if you’ll pardon my saying so,” he suggested. “Not go? Not go at all?” she wailed. “Not go at all,” was his answer. And there was such entire lack of encouragement in it that Feather sat down and burst into sobs. In few than two weeks Robert was dead and she was left a lovely penniless widow with a child. CHAPTER III Two or three decades earlier the prevailing sentiment would have been that “poor little Mrs. Gareth-Lawless” and her situation were pathetic. Her acquaintances would sympathetically have discussed her helplessness and absolute lack of all resource. So very pretty, so young, the mother of a dear little girl—left with no income! How very sad! What _could_ she do? The elect would have paid her visits and sitting in her darkened drawing-room earnestly besought her to trust to her Maker and suggested “the Scriptures” as suitable reading. Some of them—rare and strange souls even in their time—would have known what they meant and meant what they said in a way they had as yet only the power to express through the medium of a certain shibboleth, the rest would have used the same forms merely because shibboleth is easy and always safe and creditable.