“He was taken away by his mother. That was the beginning of my finding out,” she said. “I heard Andrews talking to her sister and in a baby way I gathered that Lord Coombe had sent him. I hated Lord Coombe for years before I found out that he hadn’t—and that there was another reason. After that it took time to puzzle things out and piece them together. But at last I found out what the reason had been. Then I began to make plans. These are not my rooms,” glancing about her again, “—these are not my clothes,” with a little pull at her dress. “I’m not ‘a strong character’, Mademoiselle, as I wanted to be, but I haven’t one little regret—not one.” She kneeled down and put her arms round her old friend’s waist, lifting her face. “I’m like a leaf blown about by the wind. I don’t know what it will do with me. Where do leaves go? One never knows really.” She put her face down on Mademoiselle’s knee then and cried with soft bitterness. When she bade her good-bye at Charing Cross Station and stood and watched the train until it was quite out of sight, afterwards she went back to the rooms for which she felt no regrets. And before she went to bed that night Feather came and gave her farewell maternal advice and warning. CHAPTER XXVIII That a previously scarcely suspected daughter of Mrs. Gareth-Lawless had become a member of the household of the Dowager Duchess of Darte stirred but a passing wave of interest in a circle which was not that of Mrs. Gareth-Lawless herself and which upon the whole but casually acknowledged its curious existence as a modern abnormality. Also the attitude of the Duchess herself was composedly free from any admission of necessity for comment. “I have no pretty young relative who can be spared to come and live with me. I am fond of things pretty and young and I am greatly pleased with what a kind chance put in my way,” she said. In her discussion of the situation with Coombe she measured it with her customary fine acumen. “Forty years ago it could not have been done. The girl would have been made uncomfortable and outside things could not have been prevented from dragging themselves in. Filial piety in the mass would have demanded that the mother should be accounted for. Now a genial knowledge of a variety in mothers leaves Mrs. Gareth-Lawless to play about with her own probably quite amusing set. Once poor Robin would have been held responsible for her and so should I. My position would have seemed to defy serious moral issues. But we have reached a sane habit of detaching people from their relations. A nice condition we should be in if we had not.” “You, of course, know that Henry died suddenly in some sort of fit at Ostend.” Coombe said it as if in a form of reply. She had naturally become aware of it when the rest of the world did, but had not seen him since the event.