“Just you clear out!” she cried and jerked the arm in an indiscreet gesture. Whimsical fate decreed that it should slip through her fingers. It fell on the lawn. She pounced. Constable pounced. He pounced first, caught the jacket in his mouth, and trotted across the lawn. She pursued. The trot became a loping gallop. She ran, she called. The gutter child's vernacular came to her aid; she called him unrecordable things. Constable, whose ears had never been so shocked before, galloped the faster. He bolted into the house, head erect, the body of the jacket in his mouth, and a forlorn sleeve trailing on the ground. Unity pursued breathless, in the awful excitement of despair. She had no idea of place. Here was a horrible dog--he had lapsed utterly from grace--robbing her of the only thing in her life that had been precious. Her childish soul was concentrated on the rescue of the holy garment. Constable darted with scrabbling pads up the stairs. On the landing he halted for a moment, and, panting, looked down on her at the bottom of. the flight. She crept up slowly, using hypocritical terms of endearment. He cocked derisive ears. When she had reached half way, he tossed his head and loped on down a corridor, up more stairs. In the house not a soul was stirring, not a sound was heard save the dull thud of the dog's pads on the carpet. Outside a cuckoo expressed ironical views on the situation. Once Unity nearly caught the robber, but he sprang beyond her grasp. At last he butted a door open with his head, and vanished. Unity followed blindly, and stood transfixed a yard or two beyond the threshold of the room. It was a vast chamber, apparently all window and blue sky, and on a bed by a window was a face framed in a mass of brown hair--the face of a girl with beautiful eyes that looked at you like stars. To Unity it seemed two or three miles from where she stood to the bedside. Constable was there already, and he had surrendered the jacket. His tail wagged slowly, and his head, with cocked ears, was on one side. “Oh, Constable, it 's very good of you, but now you've done for my jacket altogether! Why will you try to be a lady's maid?” It was the most exquisite voice in the world. Unity stood spellbound. She realized that she had unwittingly penetrated into the Holy of Holies. It was the princess herself. “Who are you, my dear?” asked Stellamaris. [Illustration: 0128] Unity's heart was beating. Her lips were dry; she licked them. She made the orphan's bob. Something stuck in her throat. Her head was in a whirl. “Unity, m' lady,” she gasped. A peal of little golden bells seemed to dance from corner to corner of the vast room: it was Stellamaris laughing. “I'm not 'my lady.' Only Aunt Julia is 'my lady.' But I've never seen you before, dear. Where do you come from?” Unity pointed. “Constable--the jacket--I was mending of it.”