"There is one thing, Robin," said Harry a little later, laughing--"what about the letters?"

"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."

"Not too fast," said Harry, smiling; "it's only a stage. There's plenty to learn--and we'll learn it together." Then, after a pause, "There's another thing, though, that will astonish you a bit--I'm engaged----"

"Engaged!" Robin stared. Quickly before his eyes pa.s.sed visions of terrible Colonial women--some entanglement that his father had contracted abroad and had been afraid to announce before. Well, whatever it might be, he would stand by him! It was they two against the world whatever happened!--and Robin felt already the antic.i.p.atory glow of self-sacrificing heroism.

Harry smiled. "Yes--Mary Bethel!"

"Mary! Hurrah!"

He rushed at his father and seized his hand--"You and Mary! Why, it's simply splendid! The very thing--I'd rather it were she than any one!--she told me what she thought of me the other night, I can tell you--fairly went for me. By Jove! I'm glad--we'll have some times, three of us here together. When was it?"

"Oh! only this morning! I had asked her before, but it was only settled this morning."

Then Robin was suddenly grave. "Oh! but, I say, there's Aunt Clare--and Uncle Garrett!" He had utterly forgotten them. What would they say? The Bethels of all people!

"Yes. I've thought about it. I'm very sorry, but I'm afraid Aunt Clare won't want to stay. I don't see what's to be done. I haven't told her yet----"

Robin saw at once that he must choose his future; it was to be his aunt or his father. His aunt with all those twenty years of faithful service behind her, his aunt who had done everything for him--or his father whom he had known for three weeks. But he had no hesitation; there was now no question it was his father for ever against the world!

"I'm sorry," he said slowly. "Perhaps there will be some arrangement.

Poor Aunt Clare! Did you--tell grandfather?"

"No. I wanted to, but I had no opportunity. But he knows--I am sure that he knows."

Their thoughts pa.s.sed to the old man. It was almost as if he had been there in the room with them, and they felt, curiously, as though he had at that moment handed over the keys of the House. For an instant they saw him; his eyes like diamonds, his wrinkled cheeks, his crooked fingers--and then his laugh. "Harry, my boy, you'll do."

"It's almost as if he was here," said Robin. He turned round and put his hand in his father's.

"I know he's pleased," he said.

And so it was during the next week, through the funeral, and the gathering of relatives and the gradual dispersing of them again, and the final inevitable seclusion when the world and the relations and the dead had all joined in leaving the family alone. The gathering of Trojans had shown, beyond a doubt, that Harry was quite fitted to take his place at the head of the family. He had acted throughout with perfect tact and everything had gone without a hitch. Many a Trojan had arrived for the funeral--mournful, red-eyed Trojans, with black c.r.a.pe and an air of deferential resignation that hinted, also, at curiosity as regards the successor. They watched Harry, ready for anything that might gratify their longing for sensational failure; a man from the backwoods was certain to fail, and their chagrined disappointment was only solaced by their certainty of some little sensation in the announcement of his surprising success.

Of course, Clare had been useful; it was on such an occasion that she appeared at her best. She was kind to them all, but at the same time impressed the dignity of her position upon them, so that they went away declaring that Clare Trojan knew how to carry herself and was young for her years.

The funeral was an occasion of great ceremony, and the town attended in crowds. Harry realised in their altered demeanour to himself their appreciation of the value of his succession, and he knew that Sir Henry Trojan was something very different from the plain Harry. But he had, from the beginning, taken matters very quietly. Now that he was a.s.sured of the affection of the only two people who were of importance to him he could afford to treat with easy acquiescence anything else that Fate might have in store for him. His diffidence, had, to some extent, left him, and he took everything that came with an ease that had been entirely foreign to him three weeks before.

Clare might indeed wonder at the change in him, for she had not the key that unlocked the mystery. The week seemed to draw father and son very closely together. Years seemed to have made little difference in their outlook on things, and in some ways Robin was the elder of the two.

They said nothing about Mary--that was to wait until after the funeral; but the consciousness of their secret added to the bond between them.

Clare herself regarded the future complacently. She was, she felt, absolutely essential to the right ruling of the House, and she intended, gradually but surely, to restore her command above and below stairs. The only possible lion in her path was Harry's marrying, but of that there seemed no fear at all.

She admired him a little for his conduct during their father's funeral; he was not such an oaf as she had thought--but she would bide her time.

At last, however, the thunderbolt fell. It was a week after the funeral, and they had reached dessert. Clare sometimes stayed with them while they smoked, and, as a rule, conversation was not very general. To-night, however, she rose to go. Her black suited her; her dark hair, her dark eyes, the dark trailing clouds of her dress--it was magnificently sombre against the firelight and the shine of the electric lamps on the silver. But Harry's "Wait a moment, Clare, I want to talk," called her back, and she stood by the door looking over her shoulder at him.

Then when she saw from his glance that it was a matter of importance, she came back slowly again towards him.

"Another family council?" said Garrett rather impatiently. "We have had a generous supply lately."

"I'm afraid this is imperative," said Harry. "I am sorry to bother you, Clare, but this seems to me the best time."

"Oh, any time suits me," she said indifferently, sitting down reluctantly. "But if it's household affairs, I should think that we need hardly keep Garrett and Robin."

"It is something that concerns us all four," said Harry. "I am going to be married!"