"Oh, I know!" Robin looked up at his father appealingly. "I don't know what you must think of me over that business. But I suppose I believed for a time in it all, and then when I saw that it wouldn't do I just wanted to get out of it as quickly as I could. I never seem to have thought about it at all--and now I'm more ashamed than I can say. But I think I'll go through with it; I don't see that there's anything else very much for me to do, any other way of making up--I think I'd rather face it." "Would you?" said Harry. "What about your friends and the House?" Robin flinched for a moment; then he said resolutely, "Yes, it would be better for them too. You see they know already--the House, I mean. All the chaps in the dining-hall and the picture-gallery, they've known about it all day, and I know that they'd rather I didn't back out of it. Besides--" he hesitated a moment. "There's another thing--I have the kind of feeling that I can't have hurt Dahlia so very much if she's the kind of girl to carry that sort of thing through; if, I mean, she takes it like that she isn't the sort of girl that would mind very much what I had done----" "Is she," said Harry, "that sort of girl?" "No, I don't think she is. That's what's puzzled me about it all. She was worth twenty of me really. But any decent sort of girl would have given them back----" "She has----" "What?" "Given them back." "The letters?" Harry went to his writing-table and produced the bundle. They lay in his hand with the blue ribbon and the neat handwriting, "For Robert Trojan," outside. Robin stared. "Not _the_ letters?" "Yes--the letters; I have had them some days." But still he did not move. "_You've_ had them?--several days?" "Yes. I went to see Miss Feverel on my own account and she gave me them----" "You had them when we asked you to help us!" "Yes--of course. It was a little secret of my own and Miss Feverel's--our--if you like--revenge." "And we've been laughing at you, scorning you; and we tried--all of us--and could do nothing! I say, you're the cleverest man in England! Score! Why I should think you have!" and then he added, "But I'm ashamed--terribly. You have known all these days and said nothing--and I! I wonder what you've thought of me----" He took the letters into his hand and undid the ribbon slowly. "I'm jolly glad you've known--it's as if you'd been looking after the family all this time, while we were plunging around in the dark. What a score! That we should have failed and you so absolutely succeeded--" Then again, "But I'm jolly ashamed--I'll tell you everything--always. We'll work together----" He looked them through and then flung them into the fire. "I've grown up," he suddenly cried; "come of age at last--at last I know."