“I’m glad I came. It’s queer how one can live a thing over again. There have been all the years between for us both. For me there’s been all a lad’s life—tutors and Eton and Oxford and people and lots of travel and amusement. But the minute I set eyes on you near the door something must have begun to drag me back. I’ll own I’ve never liked to let myself dwell on that memory. It wasn’t a good thing because it had a trick of taking me back in a fiendish way to the little chap with his heart bursting in the railway carriage—and the betrayal feeling. It’s morbid to let yourself grouse over what can’t be undone. So you faded away. But when I danced past you somehow I knew I’d come on _something_. It made me restless. I couldn’t keep my eyes away decently. Then all at once I _knew!_ I couldn’t tell you what the effect was. There you were again—I was as much obliged to tell you as I should have been if I’d found you at Braemarnie when I got there that night. Conventions had nothing to do with it. It would not have mattered even if you’d obviously thought I was a fool. You might have thought so, you know.” “No, I mightn’t,” answered Robin. “There have been no Eton and Oxford and amusements for me. This is my first party.” She rose as he had done and they stood for a second or so with their eyes resting on each other’s—each with a young smile quivering into life which neither was conscious of. It was she who first wakened and came back. He saw a tiny pulse flutter in her throat and she lifted her hand with a delicate gesture. “This dance was Lord Halwyn’s and we’ve sat it out. We must go back to the ball room.” “I—suppose—we must,” he answered with slow reluctance—but he could scarcely drag his eyes away from hers—even though he obeyed, and they turned and went. In the shining ball room the music rose and fell and swelled again into ecstasy as he took her white young lightness in his arm and they swayed and darted and swooped like things of the air—while the old Duchess and Lord Coombe looked on almost unseeing and talked in murmurs of Sarajevo. THE END PUBLISHERS’ NOTE The inflexible limitations of magazine space necessitated the omission—in its serial form—of so large a portion of _The Head of the House of Coombe_ as to eliminate much of the charm of characterization and the creation of atmosphere and background which add so greatly to the power and picturesqueness of the author’s work.