Zeppelin raids leaving fragments of bodies on pavements and broken things under fallen walls, were not so near as the women who dragged themselves back to their work with death in their faces written large—the death of husband or son or lover. These brought realities close indeed.

"I don't know how he died," one of them said to the Duchess. "I don't know how long it took him to die. I don't want to be told. I am glad he is dead. Yes, I am glad. I wish the other two were dead too. I'm not splendid and heroic. I thought I was at first, but I couldn't keep it up—after I heard about Mrs. Foster's boy. If I believed there was anything to thank, I should say 'Thank God I have no more sons.'"

That night Robin lay in the dark thinking of the dream. Had there been a dream—or had it only been like the other things one dreamed about? Sometimes an eerie fearfulness beset her vaguely. If there were letters each day! But letters belonged to a time when rivers of blood did not run through the world. She sat up in bed and clasped her hands round her knees gazing into the blackness which seemed to enclose and shut her in. It had been true! She could see the wood and the foxglove spires piercing the ferns. She could hear the ferns rustle and the little bird sounds and stirrings. And oh! she could hear Donal whispering. "Can you hear my heart beat?"

He had said it over and over again. His heart seemed to be so big and to beat so strongly. She had thought it was because he was so big and marvellous himself. It had been rapture to lay her cheek and ear against his breast and listen. Everything had been so still. They had been so still—so still themselves for pure joy in their close, close nearness. Yes, the dream had been true. But here she sat in the dark and Donal—where was Donal? Where millions of men were marching, marching—only to kill each other—thinking of nothing but killing. Donal too. He must kill. If he were a brave soldier he must only think of killing and not be afraid because at any moment he might be killed too. She clutched her knees and shuddered, feeling her forehead grow damp. Donal killing a man—perhaps a boy like himself—a boy who might have a dream of his own! How would his blue eyes look while he was killing a man? Oh! No! No! No! Not Donal!

With her forehead still damp and her hands damp also she found herself getting out of bed and walking up and down in the dark. She was wringing her hands and sobbing. She must not think of things like these. She must shut them out of her mind and think only of the dream. It had been true—it had! And then the strange thought came to her that out of all the world only he and she had known of their dreaming. And if he never came back—! (Oh! please, God, let him come back!) no one need ever know. It was their own, own dream and how could she bear to speak of it to any one and why should she? He had said he wanted to have this one thing of his very own before his life ended—if it was going to end. If it ended it would be his sacred secret and hers forever. She might live to be an old woman with white hair and no one would ever guess that since the morning stars sang together they two had belonged to each other.

Night after night she lay awake with thoughts like these. Through the waiting days she began to find an anguished comfort in the feeling that she was keeping their secret for him and that no one need ever know. More than once she went on quietly with her writing when people stood near her and spoke of him and his regiment, which every one was interested in because he was so handsome and so young and new to the leading of men. There were rumours that he must have been plunged into fierce fighting though definite news did not come through without delay.

"Boys like that," she heard. "They ought to be kept at home. All the greatest names will be extinct. And they are the splendid, silly ones who expose themselves most. Young Lord Elphinstowe a week ago—the last of his line! Scarcely a fragment of him to put together." There were women who had a hysterical desire to talk about such things and make gruesome pictures even of slightly founded stories. But when she heard them she did not even lift her eyes from her work.

One marked feature of their meetings—though they themselves had not marked it—had been that they had never talked of the future. It had been as though there were no future. To live perfectly through the few hours—even for the one hour or half hour they could snatch—was all that they could plan and hope for. Could they meet to-morrow in this place or that? When they met were they quite safe and blissfully alone? The spectre had always been waiting and they had always been trying to forget it. Each meeting had seemed so brief and crowded and breathlessly sweet.

Only a boy and a girl could have so lost sight of all but their hour and perhaps also only this boy and girl, because their hour had struck at a time when all futures seemed to hold only chances that at any moment might come to an end.

"Do you hear my heart beat? There is no time—no time!" these two things had been the beginning, the middle and the end.

Sometimes Robin went and sat in the Gardens and one day in coming out she met her mother whom she had not seen for months. Feather had been exultingly gay and fashionably patriotic and she was walking round the corner to a meeting to be held at her club. The khaki colouring of her coat and brief skirt and cap added to their military air with pipings and cords and a small upright feather of scarlet. She wore a badge and a jewelled pin or so. She was about to pass Robin unrecognised but took a second glance at her and stopped.

"I didn't know you," she exclaimed. "What is the matter?"

"Nothing—thank you," Robin answered pausing.

"Something is! You are losing your looks. Is your mistress working you to death?"

"The Duchess is very kind indeed. She is most careful that I don't do too much. I like my work more every day."

Feather took her in with a sharp scrutinising. She seemed to look her over from her hat to her shoes before she broke into her queer little critical laugh.

"Well, I can't congratulate her on the result. You are thin. You've lost your colour and your mouth is beginning to drag at the corners." And she nodded and marched away, the high heels of her beautiful small brown boots striking the pavement with a military click.

As she had dressed in the morning Robin had wondered if she was mistaken in thinking that the awful nights had made her look different.

If there had been letters to read—even a few lines such as are all a soldier may write—to read over and over again, to hide in her breast all day, to kiss and cry over and lay her cheek upon at night. Such a small letter would have been such a huge comfort and would have made the dream seem less far away. But everybody waited for letters—and waited and waited. And sometimes they went astray or were lost forever and people were left waiting.



CHAPTER XIII

But there were no letters. And she was obliged to sit at her desk in the corner and listen to what people said about what was happening, and now and then to Lord Coombe speaking in low tones to the Duchess of his anxiety and uncertainty about Donal. Anxiety was increasing on every side and such of the unthinking multitude as had at last ceased to believe that one magnificent English blow would rid the earth of Germany, had begun to lean towards belief in a vision of German millions adding themselves each day to other millions advancing upon France, Belgium, England itself, a grey encroaching mass rolling forward and ever forward, overwhelming even neutral countries until not only Europe but the whole world was covered, and the mailed fist beat its fragments into such dust as it chose. Even those who had not lost their heads and who knew more than the general public, wore grave faces because they felt they knew too little and could not know more. Coombe's face was hard and grey many days.

"It seems as if one lost them in the flood sometimes," Robin heard him say to the Duchess. "I saw his mother yesterday and could give her no definite news. She believes that he is where the worst fighting is going on. I could not tell her he was not."

As, when they had been together, the two had not thought of any future, so, now Robin was alone, she could not think of any to-morrow—perhaps she would not. She lived only in the day which was passing. She rose, dressed and presented herself to the Duchess for orders; she did the work given her to do, she saw the day gradually die and the lights lighted; she worked as long as she was allowed to do so—and then the day was over and she climbed the staircase to her room.

Sometimes she sat and wrote letters to Donal—long yearning letters, but when they were written she tore them into pieces or burned them. If they were to keep their secret she could not send such letters because there were so many chances that they would be lost. Still there was a hopeless comfort in writing them, in pouring out what she would not have written even if she had been sure that it would reach him safely. No girl who loved a man who was at the Front would let him know that it seemed as if her heart were slowly breaking. She must be brave—brave! But she was not brave, that she knew. The news from the Front was worse every day; there were more women with awful faces; some workers had dropped out and came no more. One of them who had lost three sons in one battle had died a few days after the news arrived because the shock had been too great for her strength to endure. There were new phases of anguish on all sides. She did all she was called on to do with a secret passion of eagerness; each smallest detail was the sacred thing. She begged the Duchess to allow her to visit and help the mothers of sons who were fighting—or wounded or missing. That made her feel nearer to things she wanted to feel near to. When they cried or told her stories, she could understand. When she worked she might be doing things which might somehow reach Donal or boys like Donal.

Howsoever long her life was she knew one thing would never be blotted out by time—the day she went down to Mersham Wood to see Mrs. Bennett, whose three grandsons had been killed within a few days of each other. She had received the news in one telegram. There was no fairy wood any longer, there were only bare branched trees standing holding out naked arms to the greyness of the world. They looked as if they were protesting against something. The grass and ferns were brown and sodden with late rains and there were no hollyhocks and snapdragons in the cottage garden—only on either side of the brick path dead brown stalks, some of them broken by the wind. Things had not been neatly cut down and burned and swept away. The grandsons had made the garden autumn-tidy every year before this one.

The old fairy woman sat on a clean print-covered arm chair by a very small fire. She had a black print dress on and a black shawl and a black ribbon round her cap. Her Bible lay on a little table near her but it was closed.

"Don't get up, please, Mrs. Bennett," Robin said when she lifted the latch and entered.

The old fairy woman looked at her in a dazed way.

"I'm so eye-dimmed with crying that I can scarcely see," she said.

Robin came to her and knelt down on the hearth.

"I'm your lodger," she faltered, "who—who used to love the fairy wood so."

She had not known what she would say when she spoke first but she had certainly not thought of saying anything like this. And she certainly had not known that she would suddenly find herself overwhelmed by a rising tidal wave of unbearable woe and drop her face on to the old woman's lap with wild sobbing. She had not come down from London to do this—but away from the world—in the clean, still little cottage room which seemed to hold only grief and silence and death the wave rose and broke and swept her with it.

Mrs. Bennett only gave herself up to the small clutching hands and sat and shivered.

"No one—will come in—will they?" Robin was gasping. "There is no one to hear, is there?"

"No one on earth," said the old fairy woman. "Quiet and loneliness are left if there's naught else."

What she thought it would be hard to say. The blow which had come to her at the end of a long life had, as it were, felled her as a tree might have been felled in Mersham Wood. As the tree might have lain for a short time with its leaves still seeming alive on its branches so she seemed living. But she had been severed from her root. She listened to the girl's sobbing and stroked her hair.

"Don't be afraid. There's no one left to hear but the walls and the bare trees in the wood," she said.

Robin sobbed on.

"You've a kind heart, but you're not crying for me," she said next. "You've a black trouble of your own. There's few that hasn't these days. And it's worse for the young that's got to live through it and after it. When Mary Ann comes to see after me to-morrow morning I may be lying dead, thank God. But you're a child." The small clutching hands clutched more piteously because it was so true—so true. Whatsoever befell there were all the long, long years to come—with only the secret left and the awful fear that sometime she might begin to be afraid that it was not a real thing—since no one had ever known or ever would know and since she could never speak of it or hear it spoken of.

"I'm so afraid," she shuddered at last in a small low voice. "I'm so lonely!" The old fairy woman's stroking hand stopped short.

"Is there—anything—you'd like to tell me—anything in the world?" she asked tremulously. "There's nothing I'd mind."

The pretty head on her lap shook itself to and fro.

"No! No! No! No!" the small choked voice gave out. "Nothing—nothing! Nothing. That's why it's so lonely."

As she had waited alone through the night in her cradle, as she had watched the sparrows on the roofs above her in the nursery, as she had played alone until Donal came, so it was her fate to be alone now.

"But you came away from London because there were too many people there and you wanted to be in a place where there was nothing but an empty cottage and an old woman. Some would call it lonelier here."

"The wood is here—the fairy wood!" she cried and her sobbing broke forth tenfold more bitterly.

Mrs. Bennett had seen in her day much of the troubles of others and many of the things she had seen had been the troubles of women who were young. Sometimes it had been possible to help them, sometimes it had not, but in any case she had always known that help could be given only if one asked careful questions. The old established rules with regard to one's behaviour in connection with duchesses and their belongings had strangely faded away since the severing of her root as all things on earth had faded and lost consequence. She remembered no rules as she bent her head over the girl and almost whispered to her.

"I won't ask no questions after this one, Miss dear," she said quaking. "But was there ever—a young gentleman—in the wood?"

"No! No! No! No!" four times again Robin cried it. "Never! Never!" And she lifted her face and let her see it white and streaming and with eyes which desperately defied and as they defied implored for love and aid and mercy.

The old fairy woman's nutcracker mouth trembled. It mumbled pathetically before she was able to control it. She knew she had heard this kind of thing before though in cases with which great ladies had nothing whatever to do. And at the same time there was something in this case that was somehow different.

"I don't know what to say or do," she faltered helplessly. "With the world like this—we've got to try to comfort each other—and we don't know how."

"Let me come into your arms," said Robin like a child. "Hold me and let me hold you." She crept near and folding soft arms about the old figure laid her cheek against the black shawl. "Let us cry. There's nothing for either of us to do but cry until our hearts break in two. We are all alone and no one can hear us."

"There's naught but the wood outside," moaned the old fairy woman.

The voice against the shawl was a moan also.

"Perhaps the wood hears us—perhaps it hears. Oh! me! Oh! me!"

* * * * *

When she reached London she saw that there were excited groups of people talking together in the streets. Among them were women who were crying, or protesting angrily or comforting others. But she had seen the same thing before and would not let herself look at people or hear anything she could shut her ears against. Some new thing had happened, perhaps the Germans had taken some important town and wreaked their vengeance on the inhabitants, perhaps some new alarming move had been made and disaster stared the Allies in the face. She staggered through the crowds in the station and did not really know how she reached Eaton Square.

Half an hour later she was sitting at her desk quiet and neat in her house dress. She had told the Duchess all she could tell her of her visit to old Mrs. Bennett.

"We both cried a good deal," she explained when she saw her employer look at her stained eyes. "She keeps remembering what they were like when they were babies—how rosy and fat they were and how they learned to walk and tumbled about on her little kitchen floor. And then how big they grew and how fine they looked in their khaki. She says the worst thing is wondering how they look now. I told her she mustn't wonder. She mustn't think at all. She is quite well taken care of. A girl called Mary Ann comes in three times a day to wait on her—and her daughter comes when she can but her trouble has made her almost wander in her mind. It's because they are all gone. When she comes in she forgets everything and sits and says over and over again, 'If it had only been Tom—or only Tom and Will—or if it had been Jem—or only Jem and Tom—but it's Will—and Jem—and Tom,'—over and over again. I am not at all sure I know how to comfort people. But she was glad I came."

When Lord Coombe came in to make his daily visit he looked rigid indeed—as if he were stiff and cold though it was not a cold night.

He sat down by the Duchess and took a telegram from his pocket. Glancing up at him, Robin was struck by a whiteness about his mouth. He did not speak at once. It was as though even his lips were stiff.

"It has come," he said at last. "Killed. A shell." The Duchess repeated his words after him. Her lips seemed stiff also.

"Killed. A shell."

He handed the telegram to her. It was the customary officially sympathetic announcement. She read it more than once. Her hands began to tremble. But Coombe sat with face hidden. He was bowed like an old man.

"A shell," he said slowly as if thinking the awful thing out. "That I heard unofficially." Then he added a strange thing, dragging the words out. "How could that—be blown to atoms?"

The Duchess scarcely breathed her answer which was as strange as his questioning.

"Oh! How could it!"

She put out her shaking hand and touched his sleeve, watching his face as if something in it awed her.

"You loved him?" She whispered it. But Robin heard.

"I did not know I had loved anything—but I suppose that has been it. His physical perfection attracted me at first—his extraordinary contrast to Henry. It was mere pride in him as an heir and successor. Afterwards it was a beautiful look his young blue eyes had. Beautiful seems an unmasculine word for such a masculine lad, but no other word expresses it. It was a sort of valiant brightness and joy in living and being friends with the world. I saw it every time he came to talk to me. I wished he were my son. I even tried to think of him as my son." He uttered a curious low sound like a sudden groan, "My son has been killed."

* * * * *

When he was about to leave the house and stood in the candle-lighted hall he was thinking of many dark things which passed unformedly through his mind and made him move slowly. He was slow in his movements as the elderly maid servant assisted him to put on his overcoat, and he was as slowly drawing on his gloves when his eyes—slow also—travelled up the staircase and stopped at the first landing, where he seemed to see an indefinite heap of something lying.

"Am I mistaken or is—something—lying on the landing?" he said to the woman.

The fact that he was impelled to make the inquiry seemed to him part of his abnormal state of mind. What affair of his after all were curiously dropped bundles upon his hostess' staircase? But—

"Please go and look at it," he added, and the woman gave him a troubled look and went up the stairs.

He himself was only a moment behind her. He actually found himself following her as if he were guessing something. When the maid cried out, he vaguely knew what he had been guessing.

"Oh!" the woman gasped, bending down. "It's poor little Miss Lawless! Oh, my lord," wildly after a nearer glance, "She looks as if she was dead!"



CHAPTER XIV

"Now no one will ever know."

Robin waking from long unconsciousness found her mind saying this before consciousness which was clear had actually brought her back to the world.

"Now no one will ever know—ever."

She seemed to have been away somewhere in the dark for a very long time. She was too tired to try to remember what had happened before she began to climb the staircase, which grew steeper and longer as she dragged herself from step to step. But in the back of her mind there was one particular fact she knew without trying to remember how she learned it. A shell had fallen somewhere and when it had burst Donal was "blown to atoms." How big were atoms—how small were they? Several times when she reached this point she descended into the abyss of blackness and fainted again, though people were doing things to her and trying to keep her awake in ways which troubled her greatly. Why should they disturb her so when sinking into blackness was better?

"Now no one will ever know."

She was lying in her bed in her own room. Some one had undressed her. It was a nice room and very quiet and there was only a dim light burning. It was a long time before she came back, after one of the descents into the black abyss, and became slowly aware that Something was near her bed. She did not actually see it because at first she could not have lifted or turned her eyes. She could only lie still. But she knew that it was near her and she wished it were not. At last—by degrees it ceased to be a mere thing and evolved into a person. It was a man who was holding her wrist and watching her quietly and steadily—as if he had been doing it for some time. No one else was in the room. The people who had been disturbing her by doing things had gone away.

"Now," she whispered dragging out word after word, "no one will—ever—ever know." But she was not conscious she had said it even in a whisper which could be heard. She thought the thing had only passed again through her mind.

"Donal! Blown—to—atoms," she said in the same way. "How small is—an atom?" She was sinking into the blackness again when the man dropped her wrist quickly and did something to her which brought her back.

"Don't!" she moaned. "Please—don't."

But he would not let her go.

* * * * *

Perhaps days and nights passed—or perhaps only one day and night before she found herself still lying in her bed but feeling somehow more awake when she opened her eyes and found the same man sitting close to her holding her wrist again.

"I am Dr. Redcliff," he said in a quiet voice. "You are much better. I want to ask you some questions. I will not tire you."

He began to ask her questions very gently as if he did not wish to alarm or disturb her. She had been found in a dead faint lying on the landing. She had remained unconscious for an abnormally long time. When she had been brought out of one faint she had fallen into another and this had happened again and again. The indication was that she had been struck down by some shock. In examining her he had found that she was underweight. He wished to discover if she had been secretly working too late at night in her deep interest in what she was doing. What exactly had her diet been? Had she taken enough exercise in the open air? How had she slept? The Duchess was seriously anxious.

They were the questions doctors always asked people except that he seemed more desirous of being sure of the amount of exercise she had taken than about anything else. He was specially interested in the times when she had been in the country. She was obliged to tell him she had always been alone. He thought it would have been better if she had had some companion. Once when he was asking her about her visits to Mrs. Bennett's cottage the blackness almost engulfed her again. But he was watching her very closely and perhaps seeing her turn white—gave her some stimulant in time. He had a clever face which was not unkind, but she wished that it had not had such a keenly watchful look. More than once the watchfulness tired her and she closed her eyes because she did not want him to look into them—as if he were asking questions which were not altogether doctors' questions.

When he left her and went downstairs to talk to the Duchess he asked a good many quiet questions again. He was a man whose intense interest in his profession did not confine itself wholly to its scientific aspect. An extraordinarily beautiful child swooning into death was not a mere pathological incident to him. And he knew many strange things brought about by the abnormal conditions of war. He himself was conscious of being overstrung with the rest of a tormented world.

He knew of Mrs. Gareth-Lawless and he had heard more stories of her household, her loveliness and Lord Coombe than he had time to remember. He had, of course, heard the unsavoury rumours of the child who was being brought up for some nefarious object. As he knew Lord Coombe rather well he did not believe stories about him which went beyond a certain limit. Not until he had talked to the Duchess for some time did he discover that the hard-smitten child lying half-lifeless in her bed was the very young heroine of the quite favourite scandal. The knowledge gave him furiously to think. It was Coombe who had interested the Duchess in her. The Duchess had no doubt taken her under her protection for generously benign reasons. He pursued his questioning delicately.

"Has she had any young friends? She seems to have taken her walks alone and even to have gone into the country by herself."

"The life of the young people in its ordinary sense of companionship and amusement has been stopped by the War. There may be some who go on in the old way but she has not been one of them," the Duchess said.

"Visits to old women in remote country places are not stimulating enough. Has she had no companions?"

"I tried—" said the Duchess wearily. She was rather pale herself. "The news of the Sarajevo tragedy arrived on the day I gave a small dance for her—to bring some young people together." Her waxen pallor became even more manifest. "How they danced!" she said woefully. "What living things they were! Oh!" the exclamation broke forth at a suddenly overwhelming memory. "The beautiful boy—the splendid lad who was blown to atoms—the news came only yesterday—was there dancing with the rest!"

Dr. Redcliff leaned forward slightly.

"To hear that any boy has been blown to atoms is a hideous thing," he said. "Who brought the news? Was Miss Lawless in the room when it was brought?"

"I think so though I am not sure. She comes in and goes out very quietly. I am afraid I forgot everything else. The shock was a great one. My old friend Lord Coombe brought the news. The boy would have succeeded him. We hear again and again of great families becoming extinct. The house of Coombe has not been prolific. The War has taken its toll. Donal Muir was the last of them. One has felt as though it was of great importance that—that a thing like that should be carried on." She began to speak in a half-numbed introspective way. "What does it matter really? Only one boy of thousands—perhaps hundreds of thousands before it is over? But—but it's the youngness—the power—the potential meaning—wasted—torn—scattered in fragments." She stopped and sat quite still, gazing before her as though into space.

"She is very young. She has been absorbed in war work and living in a highly charged atmosphere for some time." Dr. Redcliff said presently, "If she knew the poor lad—"

"She did not really know him well, though they had met as children. They danced together that night and sat and talked in the conservatory. But she never saw him again," the Duchess explained.

"It might have been too much, even if she did not know him well. We must keep her quiet," said Dr. Redcliff.

Very shortly afterwards he rose and went away.

An hour later he was sitting in a room at Coombe House alone with Lord Coombe. It was the room in which Mademoiselle Valle had found his lordship on the night of Robin's disappearance. No one knew now where Mademoiselle was or if she were still alive. She had been living with her old parents in a serene Belgian village which had been destroyed by the Germans. Black tales had been told of which Robin had been allowed to hear nothing. She had been protected in many ways.

Though they had not been intimates the two men knew each other well. To each individually the type of the other was one he could understand. It was plain to Lord Coombe that Redcliff found his case of rather special interest, which he felt was scarcely to be wondered at. As he himself had seen the too slender prostrate figure and the bloodless small face with its curtain of lashes lying too heavily close to the cold cheek, he had realised that their helpless beauty alone was enough to arrest more than ordinary attention. She had, as the woman had cried out, looked as if she were dead, and dead loveliness is a reaching power.

Dr. Redcliff spoke of her thoughtfully and with a certain gentleness. He at first included her with many other girls, the changes in whose methods of life he had been observing.

"The closed gates in their paths are suddenly thrown open for them because no one has to lock and unlock them," he said. "It produces curious effects. The light-minded ones take advantage of the fact and find dangerous amusement in it sometimes. The serious ones go about the work they have taken in hand. Miss Lawless is, I gather, one of the thinking and feeling ones and has gone about a great deal."

"Yes. The Duchess has tried to save her from her own ardour, but perhaps she has worked too steadily."

"Has the Duchess always known where she has gone and what people she has seen?"

"That would have been impossible. She wished her to feel free and if we had not wished it, one can see that it would not have been possible to stand guard over her. Neither was it necessary."

But he began to listen with special attention. There awakened in his mind the consciousness that he was being asked questions which suggested an object. The next one added to his awakening sense of the thing.

"Her exercise and holidays were always taken alone?" Redcliff said.

"The Duchess believed so."

"She has evidently been living under a poignant strain and some ghastly shock has struck her down. I think she must have been in the room when you brought the news of young Muir's terrible death."

"She was," said Coombe. "I saw her and then forgot."

"I thought so," Redcliff went on. "She cried out several times, 'Blown to atoms—atoms! Donal!' She was not conscious of the cries."

"Are you sure she said 'Donal'?" Coombe asked.

"Quite sure. It was that which set me thinking. I have thought a great deal. She has touched me horribly. The mere sight of her was enough. There is desolation in her childlikeness."

Lord Coombe sat extremely still. The room was very silent till Redcliff went on in dropped voice.

"There was another thing she said. She whispered it brokenly word by word. She did not know that, either. She whispered, 'Now—no one—will ever—know—ever.'"

Lord Coombe still sat silent. What he was thinking could not be read in his face but being a man of astute perception and used to the study of faces Dr. Redcliff knew that suddenly some startling thought had leaped within him.

"You were right to come to me," he said. "What is it you—suspect?"

That Dr. Redcliff was almost unbearably moved was manifest. He was not a man of surface emotions but his face actually twitched and he hastily gulped something down.

"She is a heartbreakingly beautiful thing," he said. "She has been left—through sheer kindness—in her own young hands. They were too young—and these are hours of cataclysm. She knows nothing. She does not know that—she will probably have a child."



CHAPTER XV

The swiftness of the process by which the glowing little Miss Lawless, at whom people had found themselves involuntarily looking so often, changed from a rose of a girl into something strangely like a small waxen image which walked, called forth frequent startled comment. She was glanced at even oftener than ever.

"Is she going into galloping consumption? Her little chin has grown quite pointed and her eyes are actually frightening," was an early observation. But girls who are going into galloping consumption cough and look hectic and are weaker day by day and she had no cough, nor was she hectic and, though it was known that Dr. Redcliff saw her frequently, she insisted that she was not ill and begged the Duchess to let her go on with her work.

"But the done-for woe in her face is inexplicable—in a girl who has had no love affairs and has not even known any one who could have flirted with her and ridden away. The little thing's done for. It cries out aloud. I can't bear to look at her," one woman protested.

"I shall send her away if she does not improve," the Duchess said. "She shall go to some remote place in the Highlands and she shall not be allowed to remember that there is a war in the world. If I can manage to send her old nurse Dowie with her she will stand guard over her like an old shepherd."

She also had been struck by the look which had been spoken of as "done-for." Girls did not look like that for any common reason. She asked herself questions and with great care sat on foot a gradual and delicate cross-examination of Robin herself. But she discovered no reason common or uncommon for the thing she recognised each time she looked at her. It was inevitable that she should talk to Lord Coombe but she met in him a sort of barrier. She could not avoid seeing that he was preoccupied. She remotely felt that he was turning over in his mind something which precluded the possibility of his giving attention to other questions.

"I almost feel as if your interest in her had lapsed," she said at last.

"No. It has taken a—an entirely new form," was his answer.

It was when his glance encountered hers after he said this that each regarded the other with a slow growing anxiousness. Something came to life in each pair of eyes and it was something disturbed and reluctant. The Duchess spoke first.

"She has had no companions," she said painfully. "The War put an end to what I thought I might do for her. There has been nobody."

"At present it is a curious fact that in one sense we know very little of each other's lives," he answered. "The old leisurely habit of observing details no longer exists. As Redcliff said in speaking of her—and girls generally—all the gates are thrown wide open."

The Duchess was very silent for a space before she made her reply.

"Yes."

"You do not know her mother?"

"No."

"Two weeks ago she gave me something to reflect on. Her feeling for her daughter is that of a pretty cat-like woman for something enragingly younger than herself. She always resented her. She was infuriated by your interest in her. She said to me one afternoon, 'I hope the Duchess is still pleased with her companion. I saw her to-day in Bond Street and she looked like a housemaid I once had to dismiss rather suddenly. I am glad she is in her grace's house and not in mine.'"

After a few seconds—

"I am glad she is in my house and not in hers," the Duchess said.

"After I had spoken to her at some length and she had quite lost her temper, she added 'You evidently don't know that she has been meeting Donal Muir. He told me so himself at the Erwyn's. I asked him if he had seen her since the dance and he owned that he had—and then was cross at himself for making the slip. I did not ask him how often he had met her. He would not have told me. But if he met her once he met her as often as he chose.' She was not lying when she said it. I know her. I have been thinking constantly ever since." There was a brief silence between them; then he proceeded. "Robin worshipped him when she was a mere baby. They were very beautiful together on the night of the dance. She fainted on the stairway after hearing of his death. She had been crawling up to hide herself in her room, poor child! It is one of the tragedies. Perhaps you and I together—"

The Duchess was seeing again the two who had come forth shining from the conservatory. She continued to see them as Lord Coombe went on speaking, telling her what Dr. Redcliff had told him.

* * * * *

On her part Robin scarcely understood anything which was happening because nothing seemed to matter. On the morning when the Duchess told her that Dr. Redcliff wished to see her alone that fact mattered as little as the rest. She was indifferently conscious that the Duchess regarded her in an anxious kind way, but if she had been unkind instead of kind that would have meant nothing. There was only room for one thing in the world. She wondered sometimes if she were really dead—as Donal was—and did not know she was so. Perhaps after people died they walked about as she did and did not understand that others could not see them and they were not alive. But if she were dead she would surely see Donal.

Before she went to Dr. Redcliff the Duchess took her hand and held it closely in both her own. She looked at her with a curious sort of pitifulness—as if she were sorry.

"My poor child," she said. "Whatsoever he tells you don't be frightened. Don't think you are without friends. I will take care of you."

"Thank you," she said. "I don't think anything would frighten me. Nothing seems frightening—now." After which she went into the room where Dr. Redcliff was waiting for her.

* * * * *

The Duchess sat alone and thought deeply. What she thought of chiefly was the Head of the House of Coombe. She had always known that more than probably his attitude towards a circumstance of this sort would not even remotely approach in likeness that of other people. His point of view would detach itself from ordinary theories of moralities and immoralities. He would see with singular clearness all sides of the incident. He would not be indignant, or annoyed or embarrassed. He had had an interest in Robin as a creature representing peculiar loveliness and undefended potentialities. Sometimes she had felt that this had even verged on a tenderness of which he was himself remotely, if at all, conscious. Concerning the boy Donal she had realised that he felt something stronger and deeper than any words of his own had at any time expressed. He had believed fine things of him and had watched him silently. He had wished he had been his own flesh and blood. Perhaps he had always felt a longing for a son who might have been his companion as well as his successor. Who knew whether a thwarted paternal instinct might not now be giving him such thinking to do as he might have done if Donal Muir had been the son of his body—dead on the battlefield but leaving behind him something to be gravely considered? What would a man think—what would a man do under such circumstances?

"One might imagine what some men would do—but it would depend entirely upon the type," she thought. "What he will do will be different. It might seem cold; it might be merely judicial—but it might be surprising."

She was quite haunted by the haggard look of his face as he had exclaimed:

"I wish to God I had known him better! I wish to God I had talked to him more!"

What he had done this morning was to go to Mersham Wood to see Mrs. Bennett. There were things it might be possible to learn by amiable and carefully considered expression of interest in her loss and loneliness. Concerning such things as she did not already know she would learn nothing from his conversation, but concerning such things as she had become aware of he would learn everything without alarming her.

"If those unhappy children met at her cottage and wandered about in Mersham Wood together the tragedy is understandable."

The Duchess' thinking ended pityingly because just at this time it was that Robin opened the door and stood looking at her.

It seemed as though Dr. Redcliff must have talked to her for a long time. But she had on her small hat and coat and what the Duchess seemed chiefly to see was the wide darkness of her eyes set in a face suddenly pinched, small and snow white. She looked like a starved baby.

"Please," she said with her hands clasped against her chest, "please—may I go to Mersham Wood?"

"To—Mersham Wood," the Duchess felt aghast—and then suddenly a flood of thought rushed upon her.

"It is not very far," the little gasping voice uttered. "I must go, please! Oh! I must! Just—to Mersham Wood!"

Something almost uncontrollable rose in the Duchess' throat.

"Child," she said. "Come here!"

Robin went to her—oh, poor little soul!—in utter obedience. As she drew close to her she went down upon her knees holding up her hands like a little nun at prayer.

"Please let me go," she said again. "Only to Mersham Wood."

"Stay here, my poor child and talk to me," the Duchess said. "The time has come when you must talk to some one."

"When I come back—I will try. I—I want to ask—the Wood," said Robin. She caught at a fold of the Duchess' dress and went on rapidly.

"It is not far. Dr. Redcliff said I might go. Mrs. Bennett is there. She loves me."

"Are you going to talk to Mrs. Bennett?"

"No! No! No! No! Not to any one in the world."

Hapless young creatures in her plight must always be touching, but her touchingness was indescribable—almost unendurable to the ripe aged woman of the world who watched and heard her. It was as if she knew nothing of the meaning of things—as if some little spirit had been torn from heaven and flung down upon the dark earth. One felt that one must weep aloud over the exquisite incomprehensible remoteness of her. And it was so awfully plain that there was some tragic connection with the Wood and that her whole soul cried out to it. And she would not speak to any one in the world. Such things had been known. Was the child's brain wavering? Why not? All the world was mad was the older woman's thought, and she herself after all the years, had for this moment no sense of balance and felt as if all old reasons for things had been swept away.

"If you will come back," she said. "I will let you go."

After the poor child had gone there formulated itself in her mind the thought that if Lord Coombe and Mrs. Bennett met her together some clarity might be reached. But then again she said to herself, "Oh why, after all, should she be asked questions? What can it matter to the rest of the woeful world if she hides it forever in her heart?"

And she sat with drooped head knowing that she was tired of living because some things were so helpless.



CHAPTER XVI

The Wood was gradually growing darker. It had been almost brilliant during a part of the afternoon because the bareness of the branches let in the wintry sun. There were no leaves to keep it out and there had been a rare, chill blue sky. All seemed cold blue sky where it was not brown or sodden yellow fern and moss. The trunks of the trees looked stark and the tall, slender white stems of the birches stood out here and there among the darker growth like ghosts who were sentinels. It was always a silent place and now its stillness seemed even added to by the one sound which broke it—the sound of sobbing—sobbing—sobbing.

It had been going on for some time. There had stolen through the narrow trodden pathway a dark slight figure and this had dropped upon the ground under a large tree which was one of a group whose branches had made a few months ago a canopy of green where birds had built nests and where one nightingale had sung night after night to the moon.

Later—Robin had said to herself—she would go to the cottage, and she would sit upon the hearth and lay her head on Mrs. Bennett's knee and they would cling together and sob and talk of the battlefields and the boys lying dead there. But she had no thought of saying any other thing to her, because there was nothing left to say. She had said nothing to Dr. Redcliff; she had only sat listening to him and feeling her eyes widening as she tried to follow and understand what he was saying in such a grave, low-toned cautious way—as if he himself were almost afraid as he went on. What he said would once have been strange and wonderful, but now it was not, because wonder had gone out of the world. She only seemed to sit stunned before the feeling that now the dream was not a sacred secret any longer and there grew within her, as she heard, a wild longing to fly to the Wood as if it were a living human thing who would hear her and understand—as if it would be like arms enclosing her. Something would be there listening and she could talk to it and ask it what to do.

She had spoken to it as she staggered down the path—she had cried out to it with wild broken words, and then when she heard nothing she had fallen down upon the earth and the sobbing—sobbing—had begun.

"Donal!" she said. "Donal!" And again, "Donal!" over and over. But nothing answered, for even that which had been Donal—with the heavenly laugh and the blue in his gay eyes and the fine, long smooth hands—had been blown to fragments in a field somewhere—and there was nothing anywhere.

* * * * *

She had heard no footsteps and she was sobbing still when a voice spoke at her side—the voice of some one standing near.

"It is Donal you want, poor child—no one else," it said.

That it should be this voice—Lord Coombe's! And that amazing as it was to hear it, she was not amazed and did not care! Her sobbing ceased so far as sobbing can cease on full flow. She lay still but for low shuddering breaths.

"I have come because it is Donal," he said. "You told me once that you had always hated me. Hatred is useless now. Don't feel it."

But she did not answer.

"You probably will not believe anything I say. Well I must speak to you whether you believe me or not."

She lay still and he himself was silent. His voice seemed to be a sudden thing when he spoke.

"I loved him too. I found it out the morning I saw him march away."

He had seen him! Since she had looked at his beautiful face this man had looked at it!

"You!" She sat up on the earth and gazed, swaying. So he knew he could go on.

"I wanted a son. I once lay on the moss in a wood and sobbed as you have sobbed. She was killed too."

But Robin was thinking only of Donal.

"What—was his face like? Did you—see him near?"

"Quite near. I stood on the street. I followed. He did not see me. He saw nothing."

The sobbing broke forth again.

"Did—did his eyes look as if he had been crying? He did cry—he did!"

The Head of the House of Coombe showed no muscular facial sign of emotion and stood stiffly still. But what was this which leaped scalding to his glazed eyes and felt hot?

"Yes," he answered huskily. "I saw—even as he marched past—that his eyes were heavy and had circles round them. There were other eyes like his—some were boys' eyes and some were the eyes of men. They held their heads up—but they had all said 'Good-bye'—as he had."

The Wood echoed to a sound which was a heart-wrung wail and she dropped forward on the moss again and lay there.

"He said, 'Oh, let us cry—together—together! Oh little—lovely love'!"

She who would have borne torment rather than betray the secret of the dream, now that it could no longer be a secret lay reft of all but memories and the wild longing to hold to her breast some shred which was her own. He let her wail, but when her wailing ceased helplessly he bent over her.

"Listen to me," he said. "If Donal were here he would tell you to listen. You are a child. You are too young to know what has come upon you—both."

She did not speak.

"You were both too young—and you were driven by fate. If he had been more than a boy—and if he had not been in a frenzy—he would have remembered. He would have thought—"

Yes—yes! She knew how young! But oh, what mattered youth—or thought—or remembering! Her small hand beat in soft impatience on the ground.

He was—strangely—on one knee beside her, his head bent close, and in his voice there was a new strong insistence—as if he would not let her alone— Oh! Donal! Donal!

"He would have remembered—that he might leave a child!"

His voice was almost hard. She did not know that in his mind was a memory which now in secret broke him—a memory of a belief which was a thing he had held as a gift—a certain faith in a clear young highness and strength of body and soul in this one scion of his house, which even in youth's madness would have remembered. If the lad had been his own son he might have felt something of the same pang.

His words brought back what she had heard Redcliff say to her earlier in the day—the thing which had only struck her again to the earth.

"It—will have—no father," she shuddered. "There is not even a grave."

He put his hand on her shoulder—he even tried to force her to lift her head.

"It must have a father," he said, harshly. "Look at me. It must."

Stupefied and lost to all things as she was, she heard something in his harshness she could not understand and was startled by. Her small starved face stared at him piteously. There was no one but herself left in the world.

"There is no time—" he broke forth.

"He said so too," she cried out. "There was no time!"

"But he should have remembered," the harsh voice revealed more than he knew. "He could have given his child all that life holds that men call happiness. How could even a lad forget! He loved you—you loved him. If he had married you—"

He stopped in the midst of the words. The little starved face stared at him with a kind of awfulness of woe. She spoke as if she scarcely knew the words she uttered, and not, he saw, in the least as if she were defending herself—or as if she cared whether he believed her or not—or as if it mattered.

"Did you—think we were—not married?" the words dragged out.

Something turned over in his side. He had heard it said that hearts did such things. It turned—because she did not care. She knew what love and death were—what they were—not merely what they were called—and life and shame and loss meant nothing.

"Do you know what you are saying?" he heard the harshness of his voice break. "For God's sake, child, let me hear the truth."

She did not even care then and only put her childish elbows on her knees and her face in her hands and wept and wept.

"There was—no time," she said. "Every day he said it. He knew—he knew. Before he was killed he wanted something that was his own. It was our secret. I wanted to keep it his secret till I died."

"Where," he spoke low and tensely, "were you married?"

"I do not know. It was a little house in a poor crowded street. Donal took me. Suddenly we were frightened because we thought he was to go away in three days. A young chaplain who was going away too was his friend. He had just been married himself. He did it because he was sorry for us. There was no time. His wife lent me a ring. They were young too and they were sorry."

"What was the man's name?"

"I can't remember. I was trembling all the time. I knew nothing. That was like a dream too. It was all a dream."

"You do not remember?" he persisted. "You were married—and have no proof."

"We came away so quickly. Donal held me in his arm in the cab because I trembled. Donal knew. Donal knew everything."

He was a man who had lived through tragedy but that had been long ago. Since then he had only known the things of the world. He had seen struggles and tricks and paltry craftiness. He had known of women caught in traps of folly and passion and weakness and had learned how terror taught them to lie and shift and even show abnormal cleverness. Above all he knew exactly what the world would say if a poor wretch of a girl told a story like this of a youngster like Donal—when he was no longer on earth to refute it.

And yet if these wild things were true, here in a wintry wood she sat a desolate and undefended thing—with but one thought. And in that which was most remote in his being he was conscious that he was for the moment relieved because even worldly wisdom was not strong enough to overcome his desire to believe in a certain thing which was—that the boy would have played fair even when his brain whirled and all his fierce youth beset him.

As he regarded her he saw that it would be difficult to reach her mind which was so torn and stunned. But by some method he must reach it.

"You must answer all the questions I ask," he said. "It is for Donal's sake."

She did not lift her face and made no protest.

He began to ask such questions as a sane man would know must be answered clearly and as he heard her reply to each he gradually reached the realisation of what her empty-handed, naked helplessness confronted. That he himself comprehended what no outsider would, was due to his memories of heart-wrung hours, of days and nights when he too had been unable to think quite sanely or to reason with a normal brain. Youth is a remorseless master. He could see the tempest of it all—the hours of heaven—and the glimpses of hell's self—on whose brink the two had stood clinging breast to breast. With subtle carefulness he slowly gleaned it all. He followed the rising of the tide which at first had borne them along unquestioning. They had not even asked where they were going because the way led through young paradise. Then terror had awakened them. There had come to them the news of death day after day—lads they knew and had seen laughing a few weeks before—Halwyn, Meredith, Jack or Harry or Phil. A false rumour of a sudden order to the Front and they had stood and gazed into each other's eyes in a fateful hour. Robin did not know of the picture her disjointed, sobbed-forth sentences and words made clear. Coombe could see the lad as he stood before her in this very Wood and then went slowly down upon his knees and kissed her small feet in the moss as he made his prayer. There had been something rarely beautiful in the ecstasy of his tenderness—and she had given herself as a flower gives itself to be gathered. She seemed to have seen nothing, noted nothing, on the morning of the mad marriage, but Donal, who held her trembling in his arms as they drove through the crowded streets in the shabby neighbourhood she had never seen before, to the house crowded between others all like itself. She had actually not heard the young chaplain's name in her shyness and tremor. He would scarcely have been an entity but for the one moving fact that he himself had just hastily married a girl he adored and must leave, and so sympathised and understood the stress of their hour. On their way home they had been afraid of chance recognition and had tried to shield themselves by sitting as far back as possible in the cab.

"I could not think. I could not see. It was all frightening—and unreal."

She had not dreamed of asking questions. Donal had taken care of her and tried to help her to be less afraid of seeing people who might recognise her. She had tilted her hat over her face and worn a veil. She had gone home to Eaton Square—and then in the afternoon to the cottage at Mersham Wood.

They had not written letters to each other. Robin had been afraid and they had met almost every day. Once Lord Coombe thought himself on the track of some clue when she touched vaguely on some paper Donal had meant to send her and had perhaps forgotten in the haste and pressure of the last few hours because his orders had been so sudden. But there was no trace. There had been something he wished her to have. But if this had meant that his brain had by chance cleared to sane reasoning and he had, for a few moments touched earth and intended to send her some proof which would be protection if she needed it—the moment had been too late and, at the last, action had proved impossible. And Death had come so soon. It was as though a tornado had swept him out of her arms and dashed him broken to earth. And she was left with nothing because she asked nothing—wanted nothing.

The obviousness of this, when he had ended his questioning and exhausted his resources, was a staggering thing.

"Do you know," he said grimly, after it was all over, "—that no one will believe you?"

"Donal knew," she said. "There is no one—no one else."

"You mean that there is no one whose belief or disbelief would affect you?"

The Wood was growing darker still and she had ceased crying and sat still like a small ghost in the dim light.

"There never was any one but Donal, you know," she said. To all the rest of the world she was as a creature utterly unawake and to a man who was of the world and who had lived a long life in it the contemplation of her was a strange and baffling thing.

"You do not ask whether I believe you?" he spoke quite low.

The silence of the darkening wood was unearthly and her dropped word scarcely stirred it.

"No." She had never even thought of it.

He himself was inwardly shaken by his own feeling.

"I will believe you if—you will believe me," was what he said, a singular sharp new desire impelling him.

She merely lifted her face a little so that her eyes rested upon him.

"Because of this tragic thing you must believe me. It will be necessary that you should. What you have thought of me with regard to your mother is not true. You believed it because the world did. Denial on my part would merely have called forth laughter. Why not? When a man who has money and power takes charge of a pretty, penniless woman and pays her bills, the pose of Joseph or Galahad is not a good one for him. My statement would no more have been believed than yours will be believed if you can produce no proof. What you say is what any girl might say in your dilemma, what I should have said would have been what any man might have said. But—I believe you. Do you believe me?"

She did not understand why suddenly—though languidly—she knew that he was telling her a thing which was true. It was no longer of consequence but she knew it. And if it was true all she had hated him for so long had been founded on nothing. He had not been bad—he had only looked bad and that he could not help. But what did that matter, either? She could not feel even sorry.

"I will—try," she answered.

It was no use as yet, he saw. What he was trying to deal with was in a new Dimension.

He held out his hands and helped her to her feet.

"The Wood is growing very dark," he said. "We must go. I will take you to Mrs. Bennett's and you can spend the night with her."

The Wood was growing dark indeed. He was obliged to guide her through the closeness of the undergrowth. They threaded their way along the narrow path and the shadows seemed to close in behind them. Before they reached the end which would have led them out into the open he put his hand on her shoulder and held her back.

"In this Wood—even now—there is Something which must be saved from suffering. It is helpless—it is blameless. It is not you—it is not Donal. God help it."

He spoke steadily but strangely and his voice was so low that it was almost a whisper—though it was not one. For the first time she felt something stir in her stunned mind—as if thought were wakening—fear—a vague quaking. Her wan small face began to wonder and in the dark roundness of her eyes a question was to be seen like a drowned thing slowly rising from the deeps of a pool. But she asked no question. She only waited a few moments and let him look at her until she said at last in a voice as near a whisper as his own.

"I—will believe you."



CHAPTER XVII

He was alone with the Duchess. The doors were closed, and the world shut out by her own order. She leaned against the high back of her chair, watching him intently as she listened. He walked slowly up and down the room with long paces. He had been doing it for some time and he had told her from beginning to end the singular story of what had happened when he found Robin lying face downward on the moss in Mersham Wood.

This is what he was saying in a low, steady voice.

"She had not once thought of what most women would have thought of before anything else. If I were speaking to another person than yourself I should say that she was too ignorant of the world. To you I will say that she is not merely a girl—she is the unearthly luckless embodiment of the pure spirit of Love. She knew only worship and the rapt giving of gifts. Her unearthliness made him forget earth himself. Folly and madness of course! Incredible madness—it would seem to most people—a decently intelligent lad losing his head wholly and not regaining his senses until it was too late to act sanely. But perhaps not quite incredible to you and me. There must have been days which seemed to him—and lads like him—like the last hours of a condemned man. In the midst of love and terror and the agony of farewells—what time was there for sanity?"

"You believe her?" the Duchess said.

"Yes," impersonally. "In spite of the world, the flesh and the devil. I also know that no one else will. To most people her story will seem a thing trumped up out of a fourth rate novel. The law will not listen to it. You will—when you see her unawakened face."

"I have seen it," was the Duchess' interpolation. "I saw it when she went upon her knees and prayed that I would let her go to Mersham Wood. There was something inexplicable in her remoteness from fear and shame. She was only woe's self. I did not comprehend. I was merely a baffled old woman of the world. Now I begin to see. I believe her as you do. The world and the law will laugh at us because we have none of the accepted reasons for our belief. But I believe her as you do—absurd as it will seem to others."

"Yes, it will seem absurd," Coombe said slowly pacing. "But here she is—and here we are!"

"What do you see before us?" she asked of his deep thought.

"I see a helpless girl in a dark plight. As far as knowledge of how to defend herself goes, she is as powerless as a child fresh from a nursery. She lives among people with observing eyes already noting the change in her piteous face. Her place in your house makes her a centre of attention. The observation of her beauty and happiness has been good-natured so far. The observation will continue, but in time its character will change. I see that before anything else."

"It is the first thing to be considered," she answered.

"The next—" she paused and thought seriously, "is her mother. Perhaps Mrs. Gareth-Lawless has sharp eyes. She said to you something rather vulgarly hideous about being glad her daughter was in my house and not in hers."

"Her last words to Robin were to warn her not to come to her for refuge 'if she got herself into a mess.' She is in what Mrs. Gareth-Lawless would call 'a mess.'"

"It is what a good many people would call it," the Duchess said. "And she does not even know that her tragedy would express itself in a mere vulgar colloquialism with a modern snigger in it. Presently, poor child, when she awakens a little more she will begin to go about looking like a little saint. Do you see that—as I do?"

She thought he did and that he was moved by it though he did not say so.

"I am thinking first of her mother. Mrs. Gareth-Lawless must see and hear nothing. She is not a criminal or malignant creature, but her light malice is capable of playing flimsily with any atrocity. She has not brain enough to know that she can be atrocious. Robin can be protected only if she is shut out of the whole affair. She was simply speaking the truth when she warned the girl not to come to her in case of need."

"For a little longer I can keep her here," the Duchess said. "As she looks ill it will not be unnatural that the doctor should advise me to send her away from London. It is not possible to remember anything long in the life we live now. She will be forgotten in a week. That part of it will be simple."

"Yes," he answered. "Yes."

He paced the length of the room twice—three times and said nothing. She watched him as he walked and she knew he was going to say more. She also wondered what curious thing it might be. She had said to herself that what he said and did would be entirely detached from ordinary or archaic views. Also she had guessed that it might be extraordinary—perhaps as extraordinary as his long intimacy with Mrs. Gareth-Lawless. Was there a possibility that he was going to express himself now?

"But that is not all," he said at last and he ended his pondering walk by coming nearer to her. He sat down and touched the newspapers lying on the table.

"You have been poring over these," he said, "and I have been doing the same thing. I have also been talking to the people who know things and to those who ought to know them but don't. Just now the news is worse each day. In the midst of the roar and thunder of cataclysms to talk about a mere girl 'in trouble' appears disproportionate. But because our world seems crumbling to pieces about us she assumes proportions of her own. I was born of the old obstinate passions of belief in certain established things and in their way they have had their will of me. Lately it has forced itself upon me that I am not as modern as I have professed to be. The new life has gripped me, but the old has not let me go. There are things I cannot bear to see lost forever without a struggle."

"Such as—" she said it very low.

"I conceal things from myself," he answered, "but they rise and confront me. There were days when we at least believed—quite obstinately—in a number of things."

"Sometimes quite heroically," she admitted. "'God Save the Queen' in its long day had actual glow and passion. I have thrilled and glowed myself at the shouting song of it."

"Yes," he drew a little nearer to her and his cold face gained a slight colour. "In those days when a son—or a grandson—was born to the head of a house it was a serious and impressive affair."

"Yes." And he knew she at once recalled her own son—and George in Flanders.

"It meant new generations, and generations counted for decent dignity as well as power. A farmer would say with huge pride, 'Me and mine have worked the place for four generations,' as he would say of the owner of the land, 'Him and his have held it for six centuries.' Centuries and generations are in danger of no longer inspiring special reverence. It is the future and the things to be which count."

"The things to be—yes," the Duchess said and knew that he was drawing near the thing he had to say.

"I suppose I was born a dogged sort of devil," he went on almost in a monotone. "The fact did not manifest itself to me until I came to the time when—all the rest of me dropped into a bottomless gulf. That perhaps describes it. I found myself suddenly standing on the edge of it. And youth, and future, and belief in the use of hoping and real enjoyment of things dropped into the blackness and were gone while I looked on. If I had not been born a dogged devil I should have blown my brains out. If I had been born gentler or kinder or more patient I should perhaps have lived it down and found there was something left. A man's way of facing things depends upon the kind of thing he was born. I went on living without—the rest of myself. I closed my mouth and not only my mouth but my life—as far as other men and women were concerned. When I found an interest stirring in me I shut another door—that was all. Whatsoever went on did it behind a shut door."

"But there were things which went on?" the Duchess gently suggested.

"In a hidden way—yes. That is what I am coming to. When I first saw Mrs. Gareth-Lawless sitting under her tree—" He suddenly stopped. "No," harshly, "I need not put it into words to you." Then a pause as if for breath. "She had a way of lifting her eyes as a very young angel might—she had a quivering spirit of a smile—and soft, deep curled corners to her mouth. You saw the same things in the old photograph you bought. The likeness was—Oh! it was hellish that such a resemblance could be! In less than half an hour after she spoke to me I had shut another door. But I was obliged to go and look at her again and again. The resemblance drew me. By the time her husband died I knew her well enough to be sure what would happen. Some man would pick her up and throw her aside—and then some one else. She could have held nothing long. She would have passed from one hand to another until she was tossed into the gutter and swept away—quivering spirit of a smile and all of it. I could not have shut any door on that. I prevented it—and kept her clean—by shutting doors right and left. I have watched over her. At times it has bored me frightfully. But after a year or so—behind another door I had shut the child."

"Robin? I had sometimes thought so," said the Duchess.

"I did not know why exactly. It was not affection or attraction. It was a sort of resentment of the beastly unfairness of things. The bottomless gulf seemed to yawn in her path when she was nothing but a baby. Everything was being tossed into it before she had taken a step. I began to keep an eye on her and prevent things—or assist them. It was more fury than benevolence, but it has gone on for years—behind the shut door."

"Are you quite sure you have been entirely free from all affection for her?" The Duchess asked the question impersonally though with a degree of interest.

"I think so. I am less sure that I have the power to feel what is called 'affection' for any one. I think that I have felt something nearer it for Donal—and for you—than for any one else. But when the child talked to me in the wood I felt for the first time that I wished her to know that my relation to her mother was not the reason for her hating me which she had believed."

"She shall be made to understand," said the Duchess.

"She must," he said, "because of the rest."

The last four words were, as it were, italicised. Now, she felt, she was probably about to hear the chief thing he had been approaching. So she waited attentively.

"Behind a door has been shut another thing," he said and he endeavoured to say it with his usual detached rigidity of calm, but did not wholly succeed. "It is the outcome of the generations and the centuries at present diminishing in value and dignity. The past having had its will of me and the present and future having gripped me—if I had had a son—"

As if in a flash she saw as he lingered on the words that he was speaking of a thing of which he had secretly thought often and much, though he had allowed no human being to suspect it. She had not suspected it herself. In a secretive, intense way he had passionately desired a son.

"If you had had a son—" she repeated.

"He would have stood for both—the past and the future—at the beginning of a New World," he ended.

He said it with such deliberate meaning that the magnitude of his possible significance caused her to draw a sudden breath.

"Is it going to be a New World?" she said.

"It cannot be the old one. I don't take it upon myself to describe the kind of world it will be. That will depend upon the men and women who build it. Those who were born during the last few years—those who are about to be born now."

Then she knew what he was thinking of.

"Donal's child will be one of them," she said.

"The Head of the House of Coombe—if there is a Head who starts fair—ought to have quite a lot to say—and do. Howsoever black things look," obstinately fierce, "England is not done for. At the worst no real Englishman believes she can be. She can't! You know the old saying, 'In all wars England loses battles, but she always wins one—the last one.' She always will. Afterwards she must do her bit for the New World."



CHAPTER XVIII

This then was it—the New World and the human creatures who were to build it, the unborn as well as those now in their cradles or tottering in their first step on the pathway leading to the place of building. Yet he himself had no thought of there being any touch of heroic splendour in his way of looking at it. He was not capable of drama. Behind his shut doors of immovability and stiff coldness, behind his cynic habit of treating all things with detached lightness, the generations and the centuries had continued their work in spite of his modernity. His British obstinacy would not relinquish the long past he and his had seemed to own in representing it. He had loved one woman, and one only—with a love like a deep wound; he had longed for a son; he had stubbornly undertaken to protect a creature he felt life had treated unfairly. The shattering of the old world had stirred in him a powerful interest in the future of the new one whose foundations were yet to be laid. The combination of these things might lead to curious developments.

They sat and talked long and the developments were perhaps more unusual than she had imagined they might be.

"If I had been able to express the something which approached affection which I felt for Donal, he would have found out that my limitations were not deliberately evil proclivities," was one of the things he said. "One day he would have ended by making a clean breast of it. He was afraid of me. I suspect he was afraid of his mother—fond as they were of each other. I should have taken the matter in hand and married the pair of them at once—quietly if they preferred it, but safely and sanely. God knows I should have comprehended their wish to keep a roaring world out of their paradise. It was paradise!"

"How you believe her!" she exclaimed.

"She is not a trivial thing, neither was he. If I did not believe her I should know that he meant to marry her, even if fate played them some ghastly trick and there was not time. Another girl's consciousness of herself might have saved her, but she had no consciousness but his. If—if a son is born he should be what his father would have been after my death."

"The Head of the House," the Duchess said.

"It is a curious thing," he deliberated, "that now there remains no possible head but what is left of myself—it ceases to seem the mere pompous phrase one laughed at—the Head of the House of Coombe. Here I, of all men, sit before you glaring into the empty future and demanding one. There ought to have been more males in the family. Only four were killed—and we are done for."

"If you had seen them married before he went away—" she began.

He rose to his feet as if involuntarily. He looked as she had never seen him look before.

"Allow me to make a fantastic confession to you," he said. "It will open doors. If all were as the law foolishly demands it should be—if she were safe in the ordinary way—absurdly incredible or not as the statement may seem—I should now be at her feet."

"At her feet!" she said slowly, because she felt herself facing actual revelation.

"Her child would be to me the child of the son who ought to have been born to me a life time ago. God, how I have wanted him! Robin would seem to be what another Madonna-like young creature might have been if she had been my wife. She would not know that she was a little saint on an altar. She would be the shrine of the past and the future. In my inexpressive way I should be worshipping before her. That her possible son would rescue the House of Coombe from extinction would have meant much, but it would be a mere detail. Now you understand."

Yes. She understood. Things she had never comprehended and had not expected to comprehend explained themselves with comparative clearness. He proceeded with a certain hard distinctness.

"The thing which grips me most strongly is that this one—who is one of those who have work before them—shall not be handicapped. He shall not begin life manacled and shamed by illegitimacy. He shall begin it with the background of all his father meant to give him. The law of England will not believe in his claims unless they can be proven. She can prove nothing. I can prove nothing for her. If she had been a little female costermonger she would have demanded her 'marriage lines' and clung to them fiercely. She would have known that to be able to flaunt them in the face of argument was indispensable."

"She probably did not know that there existed such documents," the Duchess said. "Neither of the pair knew anything for the time but that they were wild with love and were to be torn apart."

"Therefore," he said with distinctness even clearer and harder, "she must possess indisputable documentary evidence of marriage before the child is born—as soon as possible."

"Marriage!" she hesitated aghast. "But who will—?"

"I," he answered with absolute rigidity. "It will be difficult. It must be secret. But if it can be done—when his time comes the child can look his new world in the face. He will be the Head of the House of Coombe when it most needs a strong fellow who has no cause to fear anything and who holds money and power in his hands."

"You propose to suggest that she shall marry you?" she put it to him.

"Yes. It will be the devil's own job," he answered. "She has not begun to think of the child yet—and she has abhorred me all her life. To her the world means nothing. She does not know what it can do to her and she would not care if she did. Donal was her world and he is gone. But you and I know what she does not."

"So this is what you have been thinking?" she said. It was indeed an unarchaic point of view. But even as she heard him she realised that it was the almost inevitable outcome—not only of what was at the moment happening to the threatened and threatening world, but of his singularly secretive past—of all the things he had hidden and also of all the things he had professed not to hide but had baffled people with.

"Since the morning Redcliff dropped his bomb I have not been able to think of much else," he said. "It was a bomb, I own. Neither you nor I had reason for a shadow of suspicion. My mind has a trick of dragging back to me a memory of a village girl who was left as—as she is. She said her lover had married her—but he went away and never came back. The village she lived in was a few miles from Coombe Keep and she gave birth to a boy. His childhood must have been a sort of hell. When other boys had rows with him they used to shout 'Bastard' after him in the street. He had a shifty, sickened look and when he died of measles at seven years old no doubt he was glad of it. He used to run crying to his wretched mother and hide his miserable head in her apron."

"It sounds unendurable," the Duchess said sharply.

"I can defy the world as she cannot," he said with dangerous calm. "I can provide money for her. She may be hidden away. But only one thing will save her child—Donal's child—from being a sort of outcast and losing all he should possess—a quick and quiet marriage which will put all doubt out of the question."

"And you know perfectly well what the general opinion will be with regard to yourself?"

"Damned well. A debauched old degenerate marrying the daughter of his mistress because her eighteen years attracts his vicious decrepitude. My absolute indifference to that, may I say, can not easily be formulated. She shall be spared as much as possible. The thing can be kept secret for years. She can live in entire seclusion. No one need be told until I am dead—or until it is necessary for the boy's sake. By that time perhaps changes in opinion will have taken place. But now—as is the cry of the hour—there is no time. She said that Donal said it too." He stood still for a few moments and looked at the floor. "But as I said," he terminated, "it will be the devil's own job. When I first speak to her about it—she will almost be driven mad."



CHAPTER XIX

Robin had spent the night at the cottage and Mrs. Bennett had been very good to her. They had sat by the fire together for a long time and had talked of the dead boys on the battlefield, while Robin's head had rested against the old fairy woman's knee and the shrivelled hand had stroked and patted her tremulously. It had been nearing dawn when the girl went to bed and at the last Mrs. Bennett had held on to her dress and asked her a pleading question.

"Isn't there anything you'd like me to do for you—anything on earth, Miss, dear? Sometimes there's things an old woman can do that young ones can't. If there was anything you'd like to tell me about—that I could keep private—? It'd be as safe with me as if I was a dumb woman. And it might just happen that—me being so old—I might be a help some way." She was giving her her chance, as in the course of her long life she had given it to other poor girls she loved less. One had to make ways and open gates for them.

But Robin only kissed her as lovingly as a child.

"I don't know what is going to happen to me," she said. "I can't think yet. I may want to ask you to let me come here—if—if I am frightened and don't know what to do. I know you would let me come and—talk to you—?"

The old fairy woman almost clutched her in enfolding arms. Her answer was a hoarse and trembling whisper.

"You come to me, my poor pretty," she said. "You come to me day or night—whatsoever. I'm not so old but what I can do anything—you want done."

The railroad journey back to London seemed unnaturally long because her brain began to work when she found herself half blindly gazing at the country swiftly flying past the carriage window. Perhaps the anxiousness in Mrs. Bennett's face had wakened thought in connecting itself with Lord Coombe's words and looks in the wood.

When the door of the house in Eaton Square opened for her she was conscious of shrinking from the sympathetic eyes of the war-substituted woman-servant who was the one who had found her lying on the landing. She knew that her face was white and that her eyelids were stained and heavy and that the woman saw them and was sorry for her.

The mountain climb of the stairs seemed long and steep but she reached her room at last and took off her hat and coat and put on her house dress. She did it automatically as if she were going downstairs to her work, as though there had been no break in the order of her living.

But as she was fastening the little hooks and buttons her stunned brain went on with the thought to which it had begun to awaken in the train. Since the hour when she had fallen unconscious on the landing she had not seemed to think at all. She had only felt things which had nothing to do with the real world.

There was a fire in the grate and when the last button was fastened she sat down on a seat before it and looked into the redness of the coals, her hands loosely clasped on her knee. She sat there for several minutes and then she turned her head and looked slowly round the room. She did it because she was impelled by a sense of its emptiness—by the fact that she was quite alone in it. There was only herself—only Robin in it.

That was her first feeling—the aloneness—and then she thought of something else. She seemed to feel again the hand of Lord Coombe on her shoulder when he held her back in the darkened wood and she could hear his almost whispered words.

"In this Wood—even now—there is Something which must be saved from suffering. It is helpless—it is blameless. It is not you—it is not Donal—God help it."

Then she was not alone—even as she sat in the emptiness of the room. She put up her hands and covered her face with them.

"What—will happen?" she murmured. But she did not cry.

The deadliness of the blow which had stupefied her still left her barely conscious of earthly significances. But something of the dark mistiness was beginning to lift slowly and reveal to her vague shadows and shapes, as it were. If no one would believe that she was married to Donal, then people would think that she had been the kind of girl who is sent away from decent houses, if she is a servant, and cut off in awful disgrace from her family and never spoken to again, if she belongs to the upper classes. Books and Benevolent Societies speak of her as "fallen" and "lost." Her vision of such things was at once vague and primitive. It took the form of pathetic fictional figures or memories of some hushed rumour heard by mere chance, rather than of anything more realistic. She dropped her hands upon her lap and looked at the fire again.

"Now I shall be like that," she said listlessly. "And it does not matter. Donal knew. And I do not care—I do not care."

"The Duchess will send me away," she whispered next. "Perhaps she will send me away to-day. Where shall I go!" The hands on her lap began to tremble and she suddenly felt cold in spite of the fire. The sound of a knock on the door made her start to her feet. The woman who had looked sorry for her when she came in had brought a message.

"Her grace wishes to see you, Miss," she said.

"Thank you," Robin answered.

After the servant had gone away she stood still a moment or so.

"Perhaps she is going to tell me now," she said to the empty room.

* * * * *

Two aspects of her face rose before the Duchess as the girl entered the room where she waited for her with Lord Coombe. One was that which had met her glance when Mademoiselle Valle had brought her charge on her first visit. She recalled her impression of the childlikeness which seemed all the dark dew of appealing eyes, which were like a young doe's or a bird's rather than a girl's. The other was the star-like radiance of joy which had swept down the ballroom in Donal's arms with dancing whirls and swayings and pretty swoops. About them had laughed and swirled the boys now lying dead under the heavy earth of Flemish fields. And Donal—!

This face looked small and almost thin and younger than ever. The eyes were like those of a doe who was lost and frightened—as if it heard quite near it the baying of hounds, but knew it could not get away.

She hesitated a moment at the door.

"Come here, my dear," the Duchess said.

Lord Coombe stood by a chair he had evidently placed for her, but she did not sit down when she reached it. She hesitated again and looked from one to the other.

"Did you send for me to tell me I must go away?" she said.

"What do you mean, child?" said the Duchess.

"Sit down," Lord Coombe said and spoke in an undertone rapidly. "She thinks you mean to turn her out of the house as if she were a kitchen-maid."

Robin sat down with her listless small hands clasped in her lap.

"Nothing matters at all," she said, "but I don't know what to do."

"There is a great deal to do," the Duchess said to her and she did not speak as if she were angry. Her expression was not an angry one. She looked as if she were wondering at something and the wondering was almost tender.

"We know what to do. But it must be done without delay," said Lord Coombe and his voice reminded her of Mersham Wood.

"Come nearer to me. Come quite close. I want—" the Duchess did not explain what she wanted but she pointed to a small square ottoman which would place Robin almost at her knee. Her own early training had been of the statelier Victorian type and it was not easy for her to deal freely with outward expression of emotion. And here emotion sprang at her throat, so to speak, as she watched this childish thing with the frightened doe's eyes. The girl had been an inmate of her house for months; she had been kind to her and had become fond of her, but they had never reached even the borders of intimacy.

And yet emotion had seized upon her and they were in the midst of strange and powerful drama.

Robin did as she was told. It struck the Duchess that she always did as she was told and she spoke to her hoping that her voice was not ungentle.

"Don't look at me as if you were afraid. We are going to take care of you," she said.

But the doe's eyes were still great with hopeless fearfulness.

"Lord Coombe said—that no one would believe me," Robin faltered. "He thought I was not married to Donal. But I was—I was. I wanted to be married to him. I wanted to do everything he wanted me to do. We loved each other so much. And we were afraid every one would be angry. And so many were killed every day—and before he was killed—Oh!" with a sharp little cry, "I am glad—I am glad! Whatever happens to me I am glad I was married to him before he was killed!"

"You poor children!" broke from the Duchess. "You poor—poor mad young things!" and she put an arm about Robin because the barrier built by lack of intimacy was wholly overthrown.

Robin trembled all over and looked up in her face.

"I may begin to cry," she quavered. "I do not want to trouble you by beginning to cry. I must not."

"Cry if you want to cry," the Duchess answered.

"It will be better," said Lord Coombe, "if you can keep calm. It is necessary that you should be calm enough to think—and understand. Will you try? It is for Donal's sake."

"I will try," she answered, but her amazed eyes still yearningly wondered at the Duchess. Her arm had felt almost like Dowie's.

"Which of us shall begin to explain to her?" the Duchess questioned.

"Will you? It may be better."

They were going to take care of her. She was not to be turned into the street—though perhaps if she were turned into the street without money she would die somewhere—and that would not matter because she would be thankful.

The Duchess took one of her hands and held it on her knee. She looked kind still but she was grave.

"Do not be frightened when I tell you that most people will not believe what you say about your marriage," she said. "That is because it is too much like the stories other girls have told when they were in trouble. It is an easy story to tell when a man is dead. And in Donal's case so much is involved that the law would demand proofs which could not be denied. Donal not only owned the estate of Braemarnie, but he would have been the next Marquis of Coombe. You have not remembered this and—" more slowly and with a certain watchful care—"you have been too unhappy and ill—you have not had time to realise that if Donal has a son—"

She heard Robin's caught breath.

"What his father would have inherited he would inherit also. Braemarnie would be his and in his turn he would be the Marquis of Coombe. It is because of these important things that it would be said that it would be immensely to your interest to insist that you were married to Donal Muir and the law would not allow of any shade of doubt."

"People would think I wanted the money and the castles—for myself?" Robin said blankly.

"They would think that if you were a dishonest woman—you wanted all you could get. Even if you were not actually dishonest they would see you would want it for your son. You might think it ought to be his—whether his father had married you or not. Most women love their children."

Robin sat very still. The stunned brain was slowly working for itself.

"A child whose mother seems bad—is very lonely," she said.

"It is not likely to have many friends."

"It seems to belong to no one. It must be unhappy. If—Donal's mother had not been married—even he would have been unhappy."

No one made any reply.

"If he had been poor it would have made it even worse. If he had belonged to nobody and had been poor too—! How could he have borne it!"

Lord Coombe took the matter up gently, as it were removing it from the Duchess' hands.

"But he had everything he wished for from his birth," he said. "He was always happy. I like to remember the look in his eyes. Thank God for it!"

"That beautiful look!" she cried. "That beautiful laughing look—as if all the world were joyful!"

"Thank God for it," Coombe said again. "I once knew a wretched village boy who had no legal father though his mother swore she had been married. His eyes looked like a hunted ferret's. It was through being shamed and flouted and bullied. The village lads used to shout 'Bastard' after him."

It was then that the baying of the hounds suddenly seemed at hand. The large eyes quailed before the stark emptiness of the space they gazed into.

"What shall I do—what shall I do?" Robin said and having said it she did not know that she turned to Lord Coombe.

"You must try to do what we tell you to do—even if you do not wish to do it," he said. "It shall be made as little difficult for you as is possible."

The expression of the Duchess as she looked on and heard was a changing one because her mind included so many aspects of the singular situation. She had thought it not unlikely that he would do something unusual. Could anything much more unusual have been provided than that a man, who had absolute splendour of rank and wealth to offer, should for strange reasons of his own use the tact of courts and the fine astuteness of diplomatists in preparing the way to offer marriage to a penniless, friendless and disgraced young "companion" in what is known as "trouble"? It was because he was himself that he understood what he was dealing with—that splendour and safety would hold no lure, that protection from disgrace counted as nothing, that only one thing had existence and meaning for her. And even as this passed through her mind, Robin's answer repeated it.

"I will do it whether it is difficult or not," she said, "but—" she actually got up from her ottoman with a quiet soft movement and stood before them—not a defiant young figure, only simple and elementally sweet— "I am not ashamed," she said. "I am not ashamed and I do not matter at all."

There was that instant written upon Coombe's face—so far at least as his old friend was concerned—his response to the significance of this. It was the elemental thing which that which moved him required; it was what the generations and centuries of the house of Coombe required—a primitive creature unashamed and with no cowardice or weak vanity lurking in its being. The Duchess recognised it in the brief moment of almost breathless silence which followed.

"You are very splendid, child," he said after it, "though you are not at all conscious of it."

"Sit down again." The Duchess put out a hand which drew Robin still nearer to her. "Explain to her now," she said.

Robin's light soft body rested against her when it obeyed. It responded to more than the mere touch of her hand; its yielding was to something which promised kindness and even comfort—that something which Dowie and Mademoiselle had given in those days which now seemed to have belonged to another world. But though she leaned against the Duchess' knee she still lifted her eyes to Lord Coombe.

"This is what I must ask you to listen to," he said. "We believe what you have told us but we know that no one else will—without legal proof. We also know that some form may have been neglected because all was done in haste and ignorance of formalities. You can give no clue—the ordinary methods of investigation are in confusion as the whole country is. This is what remains for us to face. You are not ashamed, but if you cannot prove legal marriage Donal's son will know bitter humiliation; he will be robbed of all he should possess—his life will be ruined. Do you understand?"

"Yes," she answered without moving her eyes from his face. She seemed to him again as he stood before her in the upper room of Lady Etynge's house when, in his clear aloof voice, he had told her that he had come to save her. He had saved her then, but now it was not she who needed saving.

"There is only one man who can give Donal's child what his father would have given him," he went on.

"Who is he?" she asked.

"I am the man," he answered, and he stood quite still.

"How—can you do it?" she asked again.

"I can marry you," his clear, aloof voice replied.

"You!—You!—You!" she only breathed it out—but it was a cry.

Then he held up his hand as if to calm her.

"I told you in the wood that hatred was useless now and that your reason for hating me had no foundation. I know how you will abhor what I suggest. But it will not be as bad as it seems. You need not even endure the ignominy of being known as the Marchioness of Coombe. But when I am dead Donal's son will be my successor. It will not be held against him that I married his beautiful young mother and chose to keep the matter a secret. I have long been known as a peculiar person given to arranging my affairs according to my own liking. The Head of the House of Coombe"—with an ironic twitch of the mouth—"will have the law on his side and will not be asked for explanations. A romantic story will add to public interest in him. If your child is a daughter she will be protected. She will not be lonely, she will have friends. She will have all the chances of happiness a girl naturally longs for—all of them. Because you are her mother."