The man started angrily and then suddenly stood quite still and erect.

"It will be better for us to walk up the Place together," Lord Coombe said, with perfect politeness.

If he could have been dashed down upon the pavement and his head hammered in with the handle of a sword, or if he could have been run through furiously again and again, either or both of these things would have been done. But neither was possible. It also was not possible to curse aloud in a fashionable London street. Such curses as one uttered must be held in one's foaming mouth between one's teeth. Count von Hillern knew this better than most men would have known it. Here was one of those English swine with whom Germany would deal in her own way later.

They walked back together as if they were acquaintances taking a casual stroll.

"There is nothing which would so infuriate your—Master-as a disgraceful scandal," Lord Coombe's highbred voice suggested undisturbedly. "The high honour of a German officer-the knightly bearing of a wearer of the uniform of the All Highest-that sort of thing you know. All that sort of thing!"

Von Hillern ground out some low spoken and quite awful German words. If he had not been trapped-if he had been in some quiet by-street!

"The man walking ahead of us is a detective from Scotland Yard. The particularly heavy and rather martial tread behind us is that of a policeman much more muscular than either of us. There is a ball going on in the large house with the red carpet spread across the pavement. I know the people who are giving it. There are a good many coachmen and footmen about. Most of them would probably recognize me."

It became necessary for Count von Hillern actually to wipe away certain flecks of foam from his lips, as he ground forth again more varied and awful sentiments in his native tongue.

"You are going back to Berlin," said Coombe, coldly. "If we English were not such fools, you would not be here. You are, of course, not going into that house."

Von Hillern burst into a derisive laugh.

"You are going yourself," he said. "You are a worn-out old ROUE, but you are mad about her yourself in your senile way."

"You should respect my age and decrepitude," answered Coombe. "A certain pity for my gray hairs would become your youth. Shall we turn here or will you return to your hotel by some other way?" He felt as if the man might a burst a blood vessel if he were obliged to further restrain himself.

Von Hillern wheeled at the corner and confronted him.

"There will come a day—" he almost choked.

"Der Toy? Naturally," the chill of Coombe's voice was a sound to drive this particular man at this particular, damnably-thwarted moment, raving mad. And not to be able to go mad! Not to be able!

"Swine of a doddering Englishman! Who would envy you—trembling on your lean shanks—whatsoever you can buy for yourself. I spit on you-spit!"

"Don't," said Coombe. "You are sputtering to such an extent that you really ARE, you know."

Von Hillern whirled round the corner.

Coombe, left alone, stood still a moment.

"I was in time," he said to himself, feeling somewhat nauseated. "By extraordinary luck, I was in time. In earlier days one would have said something about 'Provadence'." And he at once walked back.



CHAPTER XXIII



It was not utterly dark in the room, though Robin, after passing her hands carefully over the walls, had found no electric buttons within reach nor any signs of candles or matches elsewhere. The night sky was clear and brilliant with many stars, and this gave her an unshadowed and lighted space to look at. She went to the window and sat down on the floor, huddled against the wall with her hands clasped round her knees, looking up. She did this in the effort to hold in check a rising tide of frenzy which threatened her. Perhaps, if she could fix her eyes on the vault full of stars, she could keep herself from going out of her mind. Though, perhaps, it would be better if she DID go out of her mind, she found herself thinking a few seconds later.

After her first entire acceptance of the hideous thing which had happened to her, she had passed through nerve breaking phases of terror-stricken imaginings. The old story of the drowning man across whose brain rush all the images of life, came back to her. She did not know where or when or how she had ever heard or read of the ghastly incidents which came trooping up to her and staring at her with dead or mad eyes and awful faces. Perhaps they were old nightmares-perhaps a kind of delirium had seized her. She tried to stop their coming by saying over and over again the prayers Dowie had taught her when she was a child. And then she thought, with a sob which choked her, that perhaps they were only prayers for a safe little creature kneeling by a white bed-and did not apply to a girl locked up in a top room, which nobody knew about. Only when she thought of Mademoiselle Valle and Dowie looking for her—with all London spread out before their helplessness—did she cry. After that, tears seemed impossible. The images trooped by too close to her. The passion hidden within her being—which had broken out when she tore the earth under the shrubbery, and which, with torture staring her in the face, had leaped in the child's soul and body and made her defy Andrews with shrieks—leaped up within her now. She became a young Fury, to whom a mad fight with monstrous death was nothing. She told herself that she was strong for a girl—that she could tear with her nails, she could clench her teeth in a flesh, she could shriek, she could battle like a young madwoman so that they would be FORCED to kill her. This was one of the images which rose op before her again yet again, A hideous-hideous thing, which would not remain away.

She had not had any food since the afternoon cap of tea and she began to feel the need of it. If she became faint-! She lifted her face desperately as she said it, and saw the immense blue darkness, powdered with millions of stars and curving over her—as it curved over the hideous house and all the rest of the world. How high—how immense—how fathomlessly still it was—how it seemed as if there could be nothing else—that nothing else could be real! Her hands were clenched together hard and fiercely, as she scrambled to her knees and uttered a of prayer—not a child's—rather the cry of a young Fury making a demand.

"Perhaps a girl is Nothing," she cried, "-a girl locked up in a room! But, perhaps, she is Something—she may he real too! Save me-save me! But if you won't save me, let me be killed!"

She knelt silent after it for a few minutes and then she sank down and lay on the floor with her face on her arm.

How it was possible that even young and worn-out as she was, such peace as sleep could overcome her at such a time, one cannot say. But in the midst of her torment she was asleep.

But it was not for long. She wakened with a start and sprang to her feet shivering. The carriages were still coming and going with guests for the big house opposite. It could not be late, though she seemed to have been in the place for years—long enough to feel that it was the hideous centre of the whole earth and all sane and honest memories were a dream. She thought she would begin to walk up and down the room.

But a sound she heard at this very instant made her stand stock still. She had known there would be a sound at last—she had waited for it all the time—she had known, of course, that it would come, but she had not even tried to guess whether she would hear it early or late. It would be the sound of the turning of the handle of the locked door. It had come. There it was! The click of the lock first and then the creak of the turned handle!

She went to the window again and stood with her back against it, so that her body was outlined against the faint light. Would the person come in the dark, or would he carry a light? Something began to whirl in her brain. What was the low, pumping thump she seemed to hear and feel at the same time? It was the awful thumping of her heart.

The door opened—not stealthily, but quite in the ordinary way. The person who came in did not move stealthily either. He came in as though he were making an evening call. How tall and straight his body was, with a devilish elegance of line against the background of light in the hall. She thought she saw a white flower on his lapel as his overcoat fell back. The leering footman had opened the for him.

"Turn on the lights." A voice she knew gave the order, the leering footman obeyed, touching a spot high on the wall.

She had vaguely and sickeningly felt almost sure that it would be either Count von Hillern or Lord Coombe—and it was not Count von Hillern! The cold wicked face—the ironic eyes which made her creep—the absurd, elderly perfection of dress—even the flawless flower-made her flash quake with repulsion. If Satan came into the room, he might look like that and make one's revolting being quake so.

"I thought—it might be you," the strange girl's voice said to him aloud.

"Robin," he said.

He was moving towards her and, as she threw out her madly clenched little hands, he stopped and drew back.

"Why did you think I might come?" he asked.

"Because you are the kind of a man who would do the things only devils would do. I have hated-hated-hated you since I was a baby. Come and kill me if you like. Call the footman back to help you, if yon like. I can't get away. Kill me—kill me—kill me!"

She was lost in her frenzy and looked as if she were mad.

One moment he hesitated, and then he pointed politely to the sofa.

"Go and sit down, please," he suggested. It was no more then a courteous suggestion. "I shall remain here. I have no desire to approach you—if you'll pardon my saying so."

But she would not leave the window.

"It is natural that you should be overwrought," he said.

"This is a damnable thing. You are too young to know the worst of it."

"You are the worst of it!" she cried. "You."

"No" as the chill of his even voice struck her, she wondered if he were really human. "Von Hillern would have been the worst of it. I stopped him at the front door and knew how to send him away. Now, listen, my good child. Hate me as ferociously as you like. That is a detail. You are in the house of a woman whose name stands for shame and infamy and crime."

"What are YOU doing in it—" she cried again, "—in a place where girls are trapped-and locked up in top rooms—to be killed?"

"I came to take you away. I wish to do it quietly. It would be rather horrible if the public discovered that you have spent some hours here. If I had not slipped in when they were expecting von Hillern, and if the servants were not accustomed to the quiet entrance of well dressed men, I could not have got in without an open row and the calling of the policemen,—which I wished to avoid. Also, the woman downstairs knows me and realized that I was not lying when I said the house was surrounded and she was on the point of being 'run in'. She is a woman of broad experience, and at once knew that she might as well keep quiet."

Despite his cold eyes and the bad smile she hated, despite his almost dandified meticulous attire and the festal note of his white flower, which she hated with the rest—he was, perhaps, not lying to her. Perhaps for the sake of her mother he had chosen to save her—and, being the man he was, he had been able to make use of his past experiences.

She began to creep away from the window, and she felt her legs, all at once, shaking under her. By the time she reached the Chesterfield sofa she fell down by it and began to cry. A sort of hysteria seized her, and she shook from head to foot and clutched at the upholstery with weak hands which clawed. She was, indeed, an awful, piteous sight. He was perhaps not lying, but she was afraid of him yet.

"I told the men who are waiting outside that if I did not bring you out in half an hour, they were to break into the house. I do not wish them to break in. We have not any time to spare. What you are doing is quite natural, but you must try and get up." He stood by her and said this looking down at her slender, wrung body and lovely groveling head.

He took a flask out of his overcoat pocket—and it was a gem of goldsmith's art. He poured some wine into its cup and bent forward to hold it out to her.

"Drink this and try to stand on your feet," he said. He knew better than to try to help her to rise—to touch her in any way. Seeing to what the past hours had reduced her, he knew better. There was mad fear in her eyes when she lifted her head and threw out her hand again.

"No! No!" she cried out. "No, I will drink nothing!" He understood at once and threw the wine into the grate.

"I see," he said. "You might think it might be drugged. You are right. It might be. I ought to have thought of that." He returned the flask to his pocket. "Listen again. You must. The time will soon be up and we must not let those fellows break in and make a row that will collect a crowd We must go at once. Mademoiselle Valle is waiting for you in my carriage outside. You will not be afraid to drink wine she gives you."

"Mademoiselle!" she stammered.

"Yes. In my carriage, which is not fifty yards from the house. Can you stand on your feet?" She got up and stood but she was still shuddering all over.

"Can you walk downstairs? If you cannot, will you let me carry you? I am strong enough-in spite of my years."

"I can walk," she whispered.

"Will you take my arm?"

She looked at him for a moment with awful, broken-spirited eyes.

"Yes. I will take your arm."

He offered it to her with rigid punctiliousness of manner. He did not even look at her. He led her out of the room and down the three flights of stairs. As they passed by the open drawing-room door, the lovely woman who had called herself Lady Etynge stood near it and watched them with eyes no longer gentle.

"I have something to say to you, Madam," he said; "When I place this young lady in the hands of her governess, I will come back and say it."

"Is her governess Fraulein Hirsch?" asked the woman lightly.

"No. She is doubtless on her way back to Berlin—and von Hillern will follow her."

There was only the first floor flight of stairs now. Robin could scarcely see her way. But Lord Coombe held her up firmly and, in a few moments more, the leering footman, grown pale, opened the large door, they crossed the pavement to the carriage, and she was helped in and fell, almost insensible, across Mademoiselle Valle's lap, and was caught in a strong arm which shook as she did.

"Ma cherie," she heard, "The Good God! Oh, the good—good God!—And Lord Coombe! Lord Coombe!"

Coombe had gone back to the house. Four men returned with him, two in plain clothes and two heavily-built policemen. They remained below, but Coombe went up the staircase with the swift lightness of a man of thirty.

He merely stood upon the threshold of the drawing-room. This was what he said, and his face was entirely white his eyes appalling.

"My coming back to speak to you is—superfluous—and the result of pure fury. I allow it to myself as mere shameless indulgence. More is known against you than this—things which have gone farther and fared worse. You are not young and you are facing years of life in prison. Your head will be shaved—your hands worn and blackened and your nails broken with the picking of oakum. You will writhe in hopeless degradation until you are done for. You will have time, in the night blackness if of your cell, to remember—to see faces—to hear cries. Women such as you should learn what hell on earth means. You will learn."

When he ended, the woman hung with her back to the wall she had staggered against, her mouth opening and shutting helplessly but letting forth no sound.

He took out an exquisitely fresh handkerchief and touched his forehead because it was damp. His eyes were still appalling, but his voice suddenly dropped and changed.

"I have allowed myself to feel like a madman," he said. "It has been a rich experience—good for such a soul as I own."

He went downstairs and walked home because his carriage had taken Robin and Mademoiselle back to the slice of a house.



CHAPTER XXIV



Von Hillern made no further calls on Mrs. Gareth-Lawless. His return to Berlin was immediate and Fraulein Hirsch came no more to give lessons in German. Later, Coombe learned from the mam with the steady, blunt-featured face, that she had crossed the Channel on a night boat not many hours after Von Hillern had walked away from Berford Place. The exact truth was that she had been miserably prowling about the adjacent streets, held in the neighbourhood by some self-torturing morbidness, half thwarted helpless passion, half triumphing hatred of the young thing she had betrayed. Up and down the streets she had gone, round and round, wringing her lean fingers together and tasting on her lips the salt of tears which rolled down her cheeks—tears of torment and rage.

There was the bitterness of death in what, by a mere trick of chance, came about. As she turned a corner telling herself for the hundredth time that she must go home, she found herself face to face with a splendid figure swinging furiously along. She staggered at the sight of the tigerish rage in the white face she recognized with a gasp. It was enough merely to behold it. He had met with some disastrous humiliation!

As for him, the direct intervention of that Heaven whose special care he was, had sent him a woman to punish—which, so far, was at least one thing arranged as it should be. He knew so well how he could punish her with his mere contempt and displeasure—as he could lash a spaniel crawling at his feet. He need not deign to tell her what had happened, and he did not. He merely drew back and stood in stiff magnificence looking down at her.

"It is through some folly of yours," he dropped in a voice of vitriol. "Women are always foolish. They cannot hold their tongues or think clearly. Return to Berlin at once. You are not of those whose conduct I can commend to be trusted in the future."

He was gone before she could have spoken even if she had dared. Sobbing gasps caught her breath as she stood and watched him striding pitilessly and superbly away with, what seemed to her abject soul, the swing and tread of a martial god. Her streaming tears tasted salt indeed. She might never see him again—even from a distance. She would be disgraced and flung aside as a blundering woman. She had obeyed his every word and done her straining best, as she had licked the dust at his feet—but he would never cast a glance at her in the future or utter to her the remotest word of his high commands. She so reeled as she went her wretched way that a good-natured policeman said to her as he passed,

"Steady on, my girl. Best get home and go to bed."

To Mrs. Gareth-Lawless, it was stated by Coombe that Fraulein Hirsch had been called back to Germany by family complications. That august orders should recall Count Von Hillern, was easily understood. Such magnificent persons never shone upon society for any length of time.

That Feather had been making a country home visit when her daughter had faced tragedy was considered by Lord Coombe as a fortunate thing.

"We will not alarm Mrs. Gareth-Lawless by telling her what has occurred," he said to Mademoiselle Valle. "What we most desire is that no one shall suspect that the hideous thing took place. A person who was forgetful or careless might, unintentionally, let some word escape which—"

What he meant, and what Mademoiselle Valle knew he meant—also what he knew she knew he meant—was that a woman, who was a heartless fool, without sympathy or perception, would not have the delicacy to feel that the girl must be shielded, and might actually see a sort of ghastly joke in a story of Mademoiselle Valle's sacrosanct charge simply walking out of her enshrining arms into such a "galere" as the most rackety and adventurous of pupils could scarcely have been led into. Such a point of view would have been quite possible for Feather—even probable, in the slightly spiteful attitude of her light mind.

"She was away from home. Only you and I and Dowie know," answered Mademoiselle.

"Let us remain the only persons who know," said Coombe. "Robin will say nothing."

They both knew that. She had been feverish and ill for several days and Dowie had kept her in bed saying that she had caught cold. Neither of the two women had felt it possible to talk to her. She had lain staring with a deadly quiet fixedness straight before her, saying next to nothing. Now and then she shuddered, and once she broke into a mad, heart-broken fit of crying which she seemed unable to control.

"Everything is changed," she said to Dowie and Mademoiselle who sat on either side of her bed, sometimes pressing her head down onto a kind shoulder, sometimes holding her hand and patting it. "I shall be afraid of everybody forever. People who have sweet faces and kind voices will make me shake all over. Oh! She seemed so kind—so kind!"

It was Dowie whose warm shoulder her face hidden on this time, and Dowie was choked with sobs she dared not let loose. She could only squeeze hard and kiss the "silk curls all in a heap"—poor, tumbled curls, no longer a child's!

"Aye, my lamb!" she managed to say. "Dowie's poor pet lamb!"

"It's the knowing that kind eyes—kind ones—!" she broke off, panting. "It's the KNOWING! I didn't know before! I knew nothing. Now, it's all over. I'm afraid of all the world!"

"Not all, cherie," breathed Mademoiselle.

She sat upright against her pillows. The mirror on a dressing table reflected her image—her blooming tear-wet youth, framed in the wonderful hair falling a shadow about her. She stared at the reflection hard and questioningly.

"I suppose," her voice was pathos itself in its helplessness, "it is because what you once told me about being pretty, is true. A girl who looks like THAT," pointing her finger at the glass, "need not think she can earn her own living. I loathe it," in fierce resentment at some bitter injustice. "It is like being a person under a curse!"

At this Dowie broke down openly and let her tears run fast. "No, no! You mustn't say it or think it, my dearie!" she wept. "It might call down a blight on it. You a young thing like a garden flower! And someone—somewhere—God bless him—that some day'll glory in it—and you'll glory too. Somewhere he is—somewhere!"

"Let none of them look at me!" cried Robin. "I loather them, too. I hate everything—and everybody—but you two—just you two."

Mademoiselle took her in her arms this time when she sobbed again. Mademoiselle knew how at this hour it seemed to her that all her world was laid bare forever more. When the worst of the weeping was over and she lay quiet, but for the deep catching breaths which lifted her breast in slow, childish shudders at intervals, she held Mademoiselle Valle's hand and looked at her with a faint, wry smile.

"You were too kind to tell me what a stupid little fool I was when I talked to you about taking a place in an office!" she said. "I know now that you would not have allowed me to do the things I was so sure I could do. It was only my ignorance and conceit. I can't answer advertisements. Any bad person can say what they choose in an advertisement. If that woman had advertised, she would have described Helene. And there was no Helene." One of the shuddering catches of her breath broke in here. After it, she said, with a pitiful girlishness of regret: "I—I could SEE Helene. I have known so few people well enough to love them. No girls at all. I though—perhaps—we should begin to LOVE each other. I can't bear to think of that—that she never was alive at all. It leaves a sort of empty place."

When she had sufficiently recovered herself to be up again, Mademoiselle Valle said to her that she wished her to express her gratitude to Lord Coombe.

"I will if you wish it," she answered.

"Don't you feel that it is proper that you should do it? Do you not wish it yourself?" inquired Mademoiselle. Robin looked down at the carpet for some seconds.

"I know," she at last admitted, "that it is proper. But I don't wish to do it."

"No?" said Mademoiselle Valle.

Robin raised her eyes from the carpet and fixed them on her.

"It is because of—reasons," she said. "It is part of the horror I want to forget. Even you mayn't know what it has done to me. Perhaps I am turning into a girl with a bad mind. Bad thoughts keep swooping down on me—like great black ravens. Lord Coombe saved me, but I think hideous things about him. I heard Andrews say he was bad when I was too little to know what it meant. Now, I KNOW, I remember that HE knew because he chose to know—of his own free will. He knew that woman and she knew him. HOW did he know her?" She took a forward step which brought her nearer to Mademoiselle. "I never told you but I will tell you now," she confessed, "When the door opened and I saw him standing against the light I—I did not think he had come to save me."

"MON DIEU!" breathed Mademoiselle in soft horror.

"He knows I am pretty. He is an old man but he knows. Fraulein Hirsch once made me feel actually sick by telling me, in her meek, sly, careful way, that he liked beautiful girls and the people said he wanted a young wife and had his eye on me. I was rude to her because it made me so furious. HOW did he know that woman so well? You see how bad I have been made!"

"He knows nearly all Europe. He has seen the dark corners as well as the bright places. Perhaps he has saved other girls from her. He brought her to punishment, and was able to do it because he has been on her track for some time. You are not bad—but unjust. You have had too great a shock to be able to reason sanely just yet."

"I think he will always make me creep a little," said Robin, "but I will say anything you think I ought to say."

On an occasion when Feather had gone again to make a visit in the country, Mademoiselle came into the sitting room with the round window in which plants grew, and Coombe followed her. Robin looked up from her book with a little start and then stood up.

"I have told Lord Coombe that you wish—that I wish you to thank him," Mademoiselle Valle said.

"I came on my own part to tell you that any expression of gratitude is entirely unnecessary," said Coombe.

"I MUST be grateful. I AM grateful." Robin's colour slowly faded as she said it. This was the first time she had seen him since he had supported her down the staircase which mounted to a place of hell.

"There is nothing to which I should object so much as being regarded as a benefactor," he answered definitely, but with entire lack of warmth. "The role does not suit me. Being an extremely bad man," he said it as one who speaks wholly without prejudice, "my experience is wide. I chance to know things. The woman who called herself Lady Etynge is of a class which—which does not count me among its clients. I had put certain authorities on her track—which was how I discovered your whereabouts when Mademoiselle Valle told me that you had gone to take tea with her. Mere chance you see. Don't be grateful to me, I beg of you, but to Mademoiselle Valle."

"Why," faltered Robin, vaguely repelled as much as ever, "did it matter to you?"

"Because," he answered—Oh, the cold inhumanness of his gray eye!—"you happened to live in—this house."

"I thought that was perhaps the reason," she said—and she felt that he made her "creep" even a shade more.

"I beg your pardon," she added, suddenly remembering, "Please sit down."

"Thank you," as he sat. "I will because I have something more to say to you."

Robin and Mademoiselle seated themselves also and listened.

"There are many hideous aspects of existence which are not considered necessary portions of a girl's education," he began.

"They ought to be," put in Robin, and her voice was as hard as it was young.

It was a long and penetrating look he gave her.

"I am not an instructor of Youth. I have not been called upon to decide. I do not feel it my duty to go even now into detail."

"You need not," broke in the hard young voice. "I know everything in the world. I'm BLACK with knowing."

"Mademoiselle will discuss that point with you. What you have, unfortunately, been forced to learn is that it is not safe for a girl—even a girl without beauty—to act independently of older people, unless she has found out how to guard herself against—devils." The words broke from him sharply, with a sudden incongruous hint of ferocity which was almost startling. "You have been frightened," he said next, "and you have discovered that there are devils, but you have not sufficient experience to guard yourself against them."

"I have been so frightened that I shall be a coward—a coward all my life. I shall be afraid of every face I see—the more to be trusted they look, the more I shall fear them. I hate every one in the world!"

Her quite wonderful eyes—so they struck Lord Coombe—flamed with a child's outraged anguish. A thunder shower of tears broke and rushed down her cheeks, and he rose and, walking quietly to the window full of flowers, stood with his back to her for a few moments. She neither cared nor knew whether it was because her hysteric emotion bored or annoyed him, or because he had the taste to realize that she would not wish to be looked at. Unhappy youth can feel no law but its own.

But all was over during the few moments, and he turned and walked back to his chair.

"You want very much to do some work which will insure your entire independence—to take some situation which will support you without aid from others? You are not yet prepared to go out and take the first place which offers. You have been—as you say—too hideously frightened, and you know there are dangers in wandering about unguided. Mademoiselle Valle," turning his head, "perhaps you will tell her what you know of the Duchess of Darte?"

Upon which, Mademoiselle Valle took hold of her hand and entered into a careful explanation.

"She is a great personage of whom there can be no doubt. She was a lady of the Court. She is of advanced years and an invalid and has a liking for those who are pretty and young. She desires a companion who is well educated and young and fresh of mind. The companion who had been with her for many years recently died. If you took her place you would live with her in her town house and go with her to the country after the season. Your salary would be liberal and no position could be more protected and dignified. I have seen and talked to her grace myself, and she will allow me to take you to her, if you desire to go."

"Do not permit the fact that she has known me for many years to prejudice you against the proposal," said Coombe. "You might perhaps regard it rather as a sort of guarantee of my conduct in the matter. She knows the worst of me and still allows me to retain her acquaintance. She was brilliant and full of charm when she was a young woman, and she is even more so now because she is—of a rarity! If I were a girl and might earn my living in her service, I should feel that fortune had been good to me—good."

Robin's eyes turned from one of them to the other—from Coombe to Mademoiselle Valle, and from Mademoiselle to Coombe pathetically.

"You—you see—what has been done to me," she said. "A few weeks ago I should have KNOWN that God was providing for me—taking care of me. And now—I am still afraid. I feel as if she would see that—that I am not young and fresh any more but black with evil. I am afraid of her—I am afraid of you," to Coombe, "and of myself."

Coombe rose, evidently to go away.

"But you are not afraid of Mademoiselle Valle," he put it to her. "She will provide the necessary references for the Duchess. I will leave her to help you to decide."

Robin rose also. She wondered if she ought not to hold out her hand. Perhaps he saw her slight movement. He himself made none.

"I remember you objected to shaking hands as a child," he said, with an impersonal civil smile, and the easy punctiliousness of his bow made it impossible for her to go further.



CHAPTER XXV



Some days before this the Duchess of Darte had driven out in the morning to make some purchases and as she had sat in her large landau she had greatly missed Miss Brent who had always gone with her when she had made necessary visits to the shops. She was not fond of shopping and Miss Brent had privately found pleasure in it which had made her a cheerful companion. To the quiet elderly woman whose life previous to her service with this great lady had been spent in struggles with poverty, the mere incident of entering shops and finding eager salesmen springing forward to meet her with bows and amiable offers of ministration, was to the end of her days an almost thrilling thing. The Duchess bought splendidly though quietly. Knowing always what she wanted, she merely required that it be produced, and after silently examining it gave orders that it should be sent to her. There was a dignity in her decision which was impressive. She never gave trouble or hesitated. The staffs of employees in the large shops knew and reveled in her while they figuratively bent the knee. Miss Brent had been a happy satisfied woman while she had lived. She had died peacefully after a brief and, as it seemed at first, unalarming illness at one of her employer's country houses to which she had been amiably sent down for a holiday. Every kindness and attention had been bestowed upon her and only a few moments before she fell into her last sleep she had been talking pleasantly of her mistress.

"She is a very great lady, Miss Hallam," she had said to her nurse. "She's the last of her kind I often think. Very great ladies seem to have gone out—if you know what I mean. They've gone out."

The Duchess had in fact said of Brent as she stood a few days later beside her coffin and looked down at her contentedly serene face, something not unlike what Brent had said of herself.

"You were a good friend, Brent, my dear," she murmured. "I shall always miss you. I am afraid there are no more like you left."

She was thinking of her all the morning as she drove slowly down to Bond Street and Piccadilly. As she got out of her carriage to go into a shop she was attracted by some photographs of beauties in a window and paused to glance at them. Many of them were beauties whom she knew, but among them were some of society's latest discoveries. The particular photographs which caught her eye were two which had evidently been purposely placed side by side for an interesting reason. The reason was that the two women, while obviously belonging to periods of some twenty years apart as the fashion of their dress proved, were in face and form so singularly alike that they bewilderingly suggested that they were the same person. Both were exquisitely nymphlike, fair and large eyed and both had the fine light hair which is capable of forming itself into a halo. The Duchess stood and looked at them for the moment spell-bound. She slightly caught her breath. She was borne back so swiftly and so far. Her errand in the next door shop was forgotten. She went into the one which displayed the photographs.

"I wish to look at the two photographs which are so much alike," she said to the man behind the counter.

He knew her as most people did and brought forth the photographs at once.

"Many people are interested in them, your grace," he said. "It was the amazing likeness which made me put them beside each other."

"Yes," she answered. "It is almost incredible." She looked up from the beautiful young being dressed in the mode of twenty years past.

"This is—WAS—?" she corrected herself and paused. The man replied in a somewhat dropped voice. He evidently had his reasons for feeling it discreet to do so.

"Yes—WAS. She died twenty years ago. The young Princess Alixe of X—" he said. "There was a sad story, your grace no doubt remembers. It was a good deal talked about."

"Yes," she replied and said no more, but took up the modern picture. It displayed the same almost floating airiness of type, but in this case the original wore diaphanous wisps of spangled tulle threatening to take wings and fly away leaving the girl slimness of arms and shoulders bereft of any covering whatsoever.

"This one is—?" she questioned.

"A Mrs. Gareth-Lawless. A widow with a daughter though she looks in her teens. She's older than the Princess was, but she's kept her beauty as ladies know how to in these days. It's wonderful to see them side by side. But it's only a few that saw her Highness as she was the season she came with the Prince to visit at Windsor in Queen Victoria's day. Did your grace—" he checked himself feeling that he was perhaps somewhat exceeding Bond Street limits.

"Yes. I saw her," said the Duchess. "If these are for sale I will take them both."

"I'm selling a good many of them. People buy them because the likeness makes them a sort of curiosity. Mrs. Gareth-Lawless is a very modern lady and she is quite amused."

The Duchess took the two photographs home with her and looked at them a great deal afterwards as she sat in her winged chair.

They were on her table when Coombe came to drink tea with her in the afternoon.

When he saw them he stood still and studied the two faces silently for several seconds.

"Did you ever see a likeness so wonderful?" he said at last.

"Never," she answered. "Or an unlikeness. That is the most wonderful of all—the unlikeness. It is the same body inhabited by two souls from different spheres."

His next words were spoken very slowly.

"I should have been sure you would see that," he commented.

"I lost my breath for a second when I saw them side by side in the shop window—and the next moment I lost it again because I saw—what I speak of—the utter world wide apartness. It is in their eyes. She—," she touched the silver frame enclosing the young Princess, "was a little saint—a little spirit. There never was a young human thing so transparently pure."

The rigid modeling of his face expressed a thing which, himself recognizing its presence, he chose to turn aside as he moved towards the mantel and leaned on it. The same thing caused his voice to sound hoarse and low as he spoke in answer, saying something she had not expected him to say. Its unexpectedness in fact produced in her an effect of shock.

"And she was the possession of a brute incarnate, mad with unbridled lust and drink and abnormal furies. She was a child saint, and shook with terror before him. He killed her."

"I believe he did," she said unsteadily after a breath space of pause. "Many people believed so though great effort was made to silence the stories. But there were too many stories and they were so unspeakable that even those in high places were made furiously indignant. He was not received here at Court afterwards. His own emperor could not condone what he did. Public opinion was too strong."

"The stories were true," answered the hoarse low voice. "I myself, by royal command, was a guest at the Schloss in the Bavarian Alps when it was known that he struck her repeatedly with a dog whip. She was going to have a child. One night I was wandering in the park in misery and I heard shrieks which sent me in mad search. I do not know what I should have done if I had succeeded, but I tried to force an entrance into the wing from which the shrieks came. I was met and stopped almost by open violence. The sounds ceased. She died a week later. But the most experienced lying could not hide some things. Even royal menials may have human blood in their veins. It was known that there were hideous marks on her little dead body."

"We heard. We heard," whispered the Duchess.

"He killed her. But she would have died of horror if he had not struck her a blow. She began to die from the hour the marriage was forced upon her. I saw that when she was with him at Windsor."

"You were in attendance on him," the Duchess said after a little silence. "That was when I first knew you."

"Yes." She had added the last sentence gravely and his reply was as grave though his voice was still hoarse. "You were sublime goodness and wisdom. When a woman through the sheer quality of her silence saves a man from slipping over the verge of madness he does not forget. While I was sane I dared scarcely utter her name. If I had gone mad I should have raved as madmen do. For that reason I was afraid."

"I knew. Speech was the greatest danger," she answered him. "She was a princess of a royal house—poor little angel—and she had a husband whose vileness and violence all Europe knew. How DARED they give her to him?"

"For reasons of their own and because she was too humbly innocent and obedient to rebel."

The Duchess did not ask questions. The sublime goodness of which he had spoken had revealed its perfection through the fact that in the long past days she had neither questioned nor commented. She had given her strong soul's secret support to him and in his unbearable hours he had known that when he came to her for refuge, while she understood his need to the uttermost, she would speak no word even to himself.

But today though she asked no question her eyes waited upon him as it were. This was because she saw that for some unknown reason a heavy veil had rolled back from the past he had chosen to keep hidden even from himself, as it were, more than from others.

"Speech is always the most dangerous thing," he said. "Only the silence of years piled one upon the other will bury unendurable things. Even thought must be silenced. I have lived a lifetime since—" his words began to come very slowly—as she listened she felt as if he were opening a grave and drawing from its depths long buried things, "—since the night when I met her alone in a wood in the park of the Schloss and—lost hold of myself—lost it utterly."

The Duchess' withered hands caught each other in a clasp which was almost like a passionate exclamation.

"There was such a night. And I was young—young—not an iron bound vieillard then. When one is young one's anguish is the Deluge which ends the world forever. I had lain down and risen up and spent every hour in growing torture for months. I had been forced to bind myself down with bands of iron. When I found myself, without warning, face to face with her, alone in the night stillness of the wood, the bands broke. She had dared to creep out in secret to hide herself and her heartbroken terror in the silence and darkness alone. I knew it without being told. I knew and I went quite mad for the time. I was only a boy. I threw myself face downward on the earth and sobbed, embracing her young feet."

Both of them were quite silent for a few moments before he went on.

"She was not afraid," he said, even with something which was like a curious smile of tender pity at the memory. "Afterwards—when I stood near her, trembling—she even took my hand and held it. Once she kissed it humbly like a little child while her tears rained down. Never before was there anything as innocently heartbreaking. She was so piteously grateful for love of any kind and so heart wrung by my misery."

He paused again and looked down at the carpet, thinking. Then he looked up at her directly.

"I need not explain to you. You will know. I was twenty-five. My heart was pounding in my side, my blood thudded through my veins. Every atom of natural generous manhood in my being was wild with fury at the brutal wrong done her exquisiteness. And she—"

"She was a young novice fresh from a convent and very pious," the Duchess' quiet voice put in.

"You understand," he answered. "She knelt down and prayed for her own soul as well as mine. She thanked God that I was kind and would forgive her and go away—and only remember her in my prayers. She believed it was possible. It was not, but I kissed the hem of her white dress and left her standing alone—a little saint in a woodland shrine. That was what I thought deliriously as I staggered off. It was the next night that I heard her shrieks. Then she died."

The Duchess knew what else had died—the high adventure of youth and joy of life in him, the brilliant spirit which had been himself and whose utter withdrawal from his being had left him as she had seen him on his return to London in those days which now seemed a memory of a past life in a world which had passed also. He had appeared before her late one afternoon and she had for a moment been afraid to look at him because she was struck to the depths of her being by a sense of seeing before her a body which had broken the link holding it to life and walked the earth, the crowded streets, the ordinary rooms where people gathered, a dead thing. Even while it moved it gazed out of dead eyes. And the years had passed and though they had been friends he had never spoken until now.

"Such a thing must be buried in a tomb covered with a heavy stone and with a seal set upon it. I am unsealing a tomb," he said. Then after a silence he added, "I have, of cause, a reason." She bent her head because she had known this must be the case.

"There is a thing I wish you to understand. Every woman could not."

"I shall understand."

"Because I know you will I need not enter into exact detail. You will not find what I say abnormal."

There had been several pauses during his relation. Once or twice he had stopped in the middle of a sentence as if for calmer breath or to draw himself back from a past which had suddenly become again a present of torment too great to face with modern steadiness. He took breath so to speak in this manner again.

"The years pass, the agony of being young passes. One slowly becomes another man," he resumed. "I am another man. I could not be called a creature of sentiment. I have given myself interests in existence—many of them. But the sealed tomb is under one's feet. Not to allow oneself to acknowledge its existence consciously is one's affair. But—the devil of chance sometimes chooses to play tricks. Such a trick was played on me."

He glanced down at the two pictures at which she herself was looking with grave eyes. It was the photograph of Feather he took up and set a strange questioning gaze upon.

"When I saw this," he said, "this—exquisitely smiling at me under a green tree in a sunny garden—the tomb opened under my feet, and I stood on the brink of it—twenty-five again."

"You cannot possibly put it into words," the Duchess said. "You need not. I know." For he had become for the moment almost livid. Even to her who so well knew him it was a singular thing to see him hastily set down the picture and touch his forehead with his handkerchief.

She knew he was about to tell her his reason for this unsealing of the tomb. When he sat down at her table he did so. He did not use many phrases, but in making clear his reasons he also made clear to her certain facts which most persons would have ironically disbelieved. But no shadow of a doubt passed through her mind because she had through a long life dwelt interestedly on the many variations in human type. She was extraordinarily interested when he ended with the story of Robin.

"I do not know exactly why 'it matters to me'—I am quoting her mother," he explained, "but it happens that I am determined to stand between the child and what would otherwise be the inevitable. It is not that she has the slightest resemblance to—to anyone—which might awaken memory. It is not that. She and her mother are of totally different types. And her detestation of me is unconquerable. She believes me to be the worst of men. When I entered the room into which the woman had trapped her, she thought that I came as one of the creature's damnable clients. You will acknowledge that my position presents difficulties in the way of explanation to a girl—to most adults in fact. Her childish frenzy of desire to support herself arises from her loathing of the position of accepting support from me. I sympathize with her entirely."

"Mademoiselle Valle is an intelligent woman," the Duchess said as though thinking the matter out. "Send her to me and we will talk the matter over. Then she can bring the child."



CHAPTER XXVI



As a result of this, her grace saw Mademoiselle Valle alone a few mornings later and talked to her long and quietly. Their comprehension of each other was complete. Before their interview was at an end the Duchess' interest in the adventure she was about to enter into had become profound.

"The sooner she is surrounded by a new atmosphere, the better," was one of the things the Frenchwoman had said. "The prospect of an arrangement so perfect and so secure fills me with the profoundest gratitude. It is absolutely necessary that I return to my parents in Belgium. They are old and failing in health and need me greatly. I have been sad and anxious for months because I felt that it would be wickedness to desert this poor child. I have been torn in two. Now I can be at peace—thank the good God."

"Bring her to me tomorrow if possible," the Duchess said when they parted. "I foresee that I may have something to overcome in the fact that I am Lord Coombe's old friend, but I hope to be able to overcome it."

"She is a baby—she is of great beauty—she has a passionate little soul of which she knows nothing." Mademoiselle Valle said it with an anxious reflectiveness. "I have been afraid. If I were her mother——" her eyes sought those of the older woman.

"But she has no mother," her grace answered. Her own eyes were serious. She knew something of girls, of young things, of the rush and tumult of young life in them and of the outlet it demanded. A baby who was of great beauty and of a passionate soul was no trivial undertaking for a rheumatic old duchess, but—"Bring her to me," she said.

So was Robin brought to the tall Early Victorian mansion in the belatedly stately square. And the chief thought in her mind was that though mere good manners demanded under the circumstances that she should come to see the Dowager Duchess of Darte and be seen by her, if she found that she was like Lord Coombe, she would not be able to endure the prospect of a future spent in her service howsoever desirable such service might outwardly appear. This desirableness Mademoiselle Valle had made clear to her. She was to be the companion of a personage of great and mature charm and grace who desired not mere attendance, but something more, which something included the warmth and fresh brightness of happy youth and bloom. She would do for her employer the things a young relative might do. She would have a suite of rooms of her own and a freedom as to hours and actions which greater experience on her part would have taught was not the customary portion meted out to a paid companion. But she knew nothing of paid service and a preliminary talk of Coombe's with Mademoiselle Valle had warned her against allowing any suspicion that this "earning a living" had been too obviously ameliorated.

"Her life is unusual. She herself is unusual in a most dignified and beautiful way. You will, it might almost be said, hold the position of a young lady in waiting," was Mademoiselle's gracefully put explanation.

When, after they had been ushered into the room where her grace sat in her beautiful and mellow corner by the fire, Robin advanced towards the highbacked chair, what the old woman was chiefly conscious of was the eyes which seemed all lustrous iris. There was uncommon appeal and fear in them. The blackness of their setting of up-curled lashes made them look babyishly wide.

"Mademoiselle Valle has told me of your wish to take a position as companion," the Duchess said after they were seated.

"I want very much," said Robin, "to support myself and Mademoiselle thinks that I might fill such a place if I am not considered too young."

"You are not too young—for me. I want something young to come and befriend me. Am I too old for YOU?" Her smile had been celebrated fifty years earlier and it had not changed. A smile does not. She was not like Lord Coombe in any degree however remote. She did not belong to his world, Robin thought.

"If I can do well enough the things you require done," she answered blushing her Jacqueminot rose blush, "I shall be grateful if you will let me try to do them. Mademoiselle will tell you that I have no experience, but that I am one who tries well."

"Mademoiselle has answered all my questions concerning your qualifications so satisfactorily that I need ask you very few."

Such questions as she asked were not of the order Robin had expected. She led her into talk and drew Mademoiselle Valle into the conversation. It was talk which included personal views of books, old gardens and old houses, people, pictures and even—lightly—politics. Robin found herself quite incidentally, as it were, reading aloud to her an Italian poem. She ceased to be afraid and was at ease. She forgot Lord Coombe. The Duchess listening and watching her warmed to her task of delicate investigation and saw reason for anticipating agreeably stimulating things. She was not taking upon herself a merely benevolent duty which might assume weight and become a fatigue. In fact she might trust Coombe for that. After all it was he who had virtually educated the child—little as she was aware of the singular fact. It was he who had dragged her forth from her dog kennel of a top floor nursery and quaintly incongruous as it seemed, had found her a respectable woman for a nurse and an intelligent person for a governess and companion as if he had been a domesticated middle class widower with a little girl to play mother to. She saw in the situation more than others would have seen in it, but she saw also the ironic humour of it. Coombe—with the renowned cut of his overcoat—the perfection of his line and scarcely to be divined suggestions of hue—Coombe!

She did not avoid all mention of his name during the interview, but she spoke of him only casually, and though the salary she offered was an excellent one, it was not inordinate. Robin could not feel that she was not being accepted as of the class of young persons who support themselves self-respectingly, though even the most modest earned income would have represented wealth to her ignorance.

Before they parted she had obtained the position so pleasantly described by Mademoiselle Valle as being something like that of a young lady in waiting. "But I am really a companion and I will do everything—everything I can so that I shall be worth keeping," she thought seriously. She felt that she should want to be kept. If Lord Coombe was a friend of her employer's it was because the Duchess did not know what others knew. And her house was not his house—and the hideous thing she had secretly loathed would be at an end. She would be supporting herself as decently and honestly as Mademoiselle or Dowie had supported themselves all their lives.

With an air of incidentally recalling a fact, the Duchess said after they had risen to leave her:

"Mademoiselle Valle tells me you have an elderly nurse you are very fond of. She seems to belong to a class of servants almost extinct."

"I love her," Robin faltered—because the sudden reminder brought back a pang to her. There was a look in her eyes which faltered also. "She loves me. I don't know how——" but there she stopped.

"Such women are very valuable to those who know the meaning of their type. I myself am always in search of it. My dear Miss Brent was of it, though of a different class."

"But most people do not know," said Robin. "It seems old-fashioned to them—and it's beautiful! Dowie is an angel."

"I should like to secure your Dowie for my housekeeper and myself,"—one of the greatest powers of the celebrated smile was its power to convince. "A competent person is needed to take charge of the linen. If we can secure an angel we shall be fortunate."

A day or so later she said to Coombe in describing the visit.

"The child's face is wonderful. If you could but have seen her eyes when I said it. It is not the mere beauty of size and shape and colour which affect one. It is something else. She is a little flame of feeling."

The "something else" was in the sound of her voice as she answered.

"She will be in the same house with me! Sometimes perhaps I may see her and talk to her! Oh! how GRATEFUL I am!" She might even see and talk to her as often as she wished, it revealed itself and when she and Mademoiselle got into their hansom cab to drive away, she caught at the Frenchwoman's hand and clung to it, her eyelashes wet,

"It is as if there MUST be Goodness which takes care of one," she said. "I used to believe in it so—until I was afraid of all the world. Dowie means most of all. I did now know how I could bear to let her go away. And since her husband and her daughter died, she has no one but me. I should have had no one but her if you had gone back to Belgium, Mademoiselle. And now she will be safe in the same house with me. Perhaps the Duchess will keep her until she dies. I hope she will keep me until I die. I will be as good and faithful as Dowie and perhaps the Duchess will live until I am quite old—and not pretty any more. And I will make economies as you have made them, Mademoiselle, and save all my salary—and I might be able to end my days in a little cottage in the country."

Mademoiselle was conscious of an actual physical drag at her heartstrings. The pulsating glow of her young loveliness had never been more moving and oh! the sublime certainty of her unconsciousness that Life lay between this hour and that day when she was "quite old and not pretty any more" and having made economies could die in a little cottage in the country! She believed in her vision as she had believed that Donal would come to her in the garden.

Upon Feather the revelation that her daughter had elected to join the ranks of girls who were mysteriously determined to be responsible for themselves produced a curious combination of effects. It was presented to her by Lord Coombe in the form of a simple impersonal statement which had its air of needing no explanation. She heard it with eyes widening a little and a smile slowly growing. Having heard, she broke into a laugh, a rather high-pitched treble laugh.

"Really?" she said. "She is really going to do it? To take a situation! She wants to be independent and 'live her own life!' What a joke—for a girl of mine!" She was either really amused or chose to seem so.

"What do YOU think of it?" she asked when she stopped laughing. Her eyes had curiosity in them.

"I like it," he answered.

"Of course. I ought to have remembered that you helped her to an Early Victorian duchess. She's one without a flaw—the Dowager Duchess of Darte. The most conscientiously careful mother couldn't object. It's almost like entering into the kingdom of heaven—in a dull way." She began to laugh again as if amusing images rose suddenly before her. "And what does the Duchess think of it?" she said after her laughter had ceased again. "How does she reconcile herself to the idea of a companion whose mother she wouldn't have in her house?"

"We need not enter into that view of the case. You decided some years ago that it did not matter to you whether Early Victorian duchesses included you in their visiting lists or did not. More modern ones do I believe—quite beautiful and amusing ones."

"But for that reason I want this one and those like her. They would bore me, but I want them. I want them to come to my house and be polite to me in their stuffy way. I want to be invited to their hideous dinner parties and see them sitting round their tables in their awful family jewels 'talking of the sad deaths of kings.' That's Shakespeare, you know. I heard it last night at the theatre."

"Why do you want it?" Coombe inquired.

"When I ask you why you show your morbid interest in Robin, you say you don't know. I don't know—but I do want it."

She suddenly flushed, she even showed her small teeth. For an extraordinary moment she looked like a little cat.

"Robin will hare it," she cried, grinding a delicate fist into the palm on her knee. "She's not eighteen and she's a beauty and she's taken up by a perfectly decent old duchess. She'll have EVERYTHING! The Dowager will marry her to someone important. You'll help," she turned on him in a flame of temper. "You are capable of marrying her yourself!" There was a a brief but entire silence. It was broken by his saying,

"She is not capable of marrying ME."

There was brief but entire silence again, and it was he who again broke it, his manner at once cool and reasonable.

"It is better not to exhibit this kind of feeling. Let us be quite frank. There are few things you feel more strongly than that you do not want your daughter in the house. When she was a child you told me that you detested the prospect of having her on your hands. She is being disposed of in the most easily explained and enviable manner."

"It's true—it's true," Feather murmured. She began to see advantages and the look of a little cat died out, or at least modified itself into that of a little cat upon whom dawned prospects of cream. No mood ever held her very long. "She won't come back to stay," she said. "The Duchess won't let her. I can use her rooms and I shall be very glad to have them. There's at least some advantage in figuring as a sort of Dame Aux Camelias."



CHAPTER XXVII



The night before Robin went away as she sat alone in the dimness of one light, thinking as girls nearly always sit and think on the eve of a change, because to youth any change seems to mean the final closing as well as the opening of ways, the door of her room was opened and an exquisite and nymphlike figure in pale green stood exactly where the rays of the reading lamp seemed to concentrate themselves in an effort to reveal most purely its delicately startling effect. It was her mother in a dress whose spring-like tint made her a sort of slim dryad. She looked so pretty and young that Robin caught her breath as she rose and went forward.

"It is your aged parent come to give you her blessing," said Feather.

"I was wondering if I might come to your room in the morning," Robin answered.

Feather seated herself lightly. She was not intelligent enough to have any real comprehension of the mood which had impelled her to come. She had merely given way to a secret sense of resentment of something which annoyed her. She knew, however, why she had put on the spring-leaf green dress which made her look like a girl. She was not going to let Robin feel as if she were receiving a visit from her grandmother. She had got that far.

"We don't know each other at all, do we?" she said.

"No," answered Robin. She could not remove her eyes from her loveliness. She brought up such memories of the Lady Downstairs and the desolate child in the shabby nursery.

"Mothers are not as intimate with their daughters as they used to be when it was a sort of virtuous fashion to superintend their rice pudding and lecture them about their lessons. We have not seen each other often."

"No," said Robin.

Feather's laugh had again the rather high note Coombe had noticed.

"You haven't very much to say, have you?" she commented. "And you stare at me as if you were trying to explain me. I dare say you know that you have big eyes and that they're a good colour, but I may as well hint to you that men do not like to be stared at as if their deeps were being searched. Drop your eyelids."

Robin's lids dropped in spite of herself because she was startled, but immediately she was startled again by a note in her mother's voice—a note of added irritation.

"Don't make a habit of dropping them too often," it broke out, "or it will look as if you did it to show your eyelashes. Girls with tricks of that sort are always laughed at. Alison Carr LIVES sideways became she has a pretty profile."

Coombe would have recognized the little cat look, if he had been watching her as she leaned back in her chair and scrutinized her daughter. The fact was that she took in her every point, being an astute censor of other women's charms.

"Stand up," she said.

Robin stood up because she could not well refuse to do so, but she coloured because she was suddenly ashamed.

"You're not little, but you're not tall," her mother said. "That's against you. It's the fashion for women to be immensely tall now. Du Maurier's pictures in Punch and his idiotic Trilby did it. Clothes are made for giantesses. I don't care about it myself, but a girl's rather out of it if she's much less than six feet high. You can sit down."

A more singular interview between mother and daughter had assuredly rarely taken place. As she looked at the girl her resentment of her increased each moment. She actually felt as if she were beginning to lose her temper.

"You are what pious people call 'going out into the world'," she went on. "In moral books mothers always give advice and warnings to their girls when they're leaving them. I can give you some warnings. You think that because you have been taken up by a dowager duchess everything will be plain sailing. You're mistaken. You think because you are eighteen and pretty, men will fall at your feet."

"I would rather be hideous," cried suddenly passionate Robin. "I HATE men!"

The silly pretty thing who was responsible for her being, grew sillier as her irritation increased.

"That's what girls always pretend, but the youngest little idiot knows it isn't true. It's men who count. It makes me laugh when I think of them—and of you. You know nothing about them and they know everything about you. A clever man can do anything he pleases with a silly girl."

"Are they ALL bad?" Robin exclaimed furiously.

"They're none of them bad. They're only men. And that's my warning. Don't imagine that when they make love to you they do it as if you were the old Duchess' granddaughter. You will only be her paid companion and that's a different matter."

"I will not speak to one of them——" Robin actually began.

"You'll be obliged to do what the Duchess tells you to do," laughed Feather, as she realized her obvious power to dull the glitter and glow of things which she had felt the girl must be dazzled and uplifted unduly by. She was rather like a spiteful schoolgirl entertaining herself by spoiling an envied holiday for a companion. "Old men will run after you and you will have to be nice to them whether you like it or not." A queer light came into her eyes. "Lord Coombe is fond of girls just out of the schoolroom. But if he begins to make love to you don't allow yourself to feel too much flattered."

Robin sprang toward her.

"Do you think I don't ABHOR Lord Coombe!" she cried out forgetting herself in the desperate cruelty of the moment. "Haven't I reason——" but there she remembered and stopped.

But Feather was not shocked or alarmed. Years of looking things in the face had provided her with a mental surface from which tilings rebounded. On the whole it even amused her and "suited her book" that Robin should take this tone.

"Oh! I suppose you mean you know he admires me and pays bills for me. Where would you have been if he hadn't done it? He's been a sort of benefactor."

"I know nothing but that even when I was a little child I could not bear to touch his hand!" cried Robin. Then Feather remembered several things she had almost forgotten and she was still more entertained.

"I believe you've not forgotten through all these years that the boy you fell so indecently in love with was taken away by his mother because Lord Coombe was YOUR mother's admirer and he was such a sinner that even a baby was contaminated by him! Donal Muir is a young man by this time. I wonder what his mother would do now if he turned up at your mistress' house—that's what she is, you know, your mistress—and began to make love to you." She laughed outright. "You'll get into all sorts of messes, but that would be the nicest one!"

Robin could only stand and gaze at her. Her moment's fire had died down. Without warning, out of the past a wave rose and overwhelmed her then and there. It bore with it the wild woe of the morning when a child had waited in the spring sun and her world had fallen into nothingness. It came back—the broken-hearted anguish, the utter helpless desolation, as if she stood in the midst of it again, as if it had never passed. It was a re-incarnation. She could not bear it.

"Do you hate me—as I hate Lord Coombe?" she cried out. "Do you WANT unhappy things to happen to me? Oh! Mother, why!" She had never said "Mother" before. Nature said it for her here. The piteous appeal of her youth and lonely young rush of tears was almost intolerably sweet. Through some subtle cause it added to the thing in her which Feather resented and longed to trouble and to hurt.

"You are a spiteful little cat!" she sprang up to exclaim, standing close and face to face with her. "You think I am an old thing and that I'm jealous of you! Because you're pretty and a girl you think women past thirty don't count. You'll find out. Mrs. Muir will count and she's forty if she's a day. Her son's such a beauty that people go mad over him. And he worships her—and he's her slave. I wish you WOULD get into some mess you couldn't get out of! Don't come to me if you do."

The wide beauty of Robin's gaze and her tear wet bloom were too much. Feather was quite close to her. The spiteful schoolgirl impulse got the better of her.

"Don't make eyes at me like that," she cried, and she actually gave the rose cheek nearest her a sounding little slap, "There!" she exclaimed hysterically and she turned about and ran out of the room crying herself.

Robin had parted from Mademoiselle Valle at Charing Cross Station on the afternoon of the same day, but the night before they had sat up late together and talked a long time. In effect Mademoiselle had said also, "You are going out into the world," but she had not approached the matter in Mrs. Gareth-Lawless' mood. One may have charge of a girl and be her daily companion for years, but there are certain things the very years themselves make it increasingly difficult to say to her. And after all why should one state difficult things in exact phrases unless one lacks breeding and is curious. Anxious she had been at times, but not curious. So it was that even on this night of their parting it was not she who spoke.

It was after a few minutes of sitting in silence and looking at the fire that Robin broke in upon the quiet which had seemed to hold them both.

"I must learn to remember always that I am a sort of servant. I must be very careful. It will be easier for me to realize that I am not in my own house than it would be for other girls. I have not allowed Dowie to dress me for a good many weeks. I have learned how to do everything for myself quite well."

"But Dowie will be in the house with you and the Duchess is very kind."

"Every night I have begun my prayers by thanking God for leaving me Dowie," the girl said. "I have begun them and ended them with the same words." She looked about her and then broke out as if involuntarily. "I shall be away from here. I shall not wear anything or eat anything or sleep on any bed I have not paid for myself."

"These rooms are very pretty. We have been very comfortable here," Mademoiselle said. Suddenly she felt that if she waited a few moments she would know definitely things she had previously only guessed at. "Have you no little regrets?"

"No," answered Robin, "No."

She stood upon the hearth with her hands behind her. Mademoiselle felt as if her fingers were twisting themselves together and the Frenchwoman was peculiarly moved by the fact that she looked like a slim jeune fille of a creature saying a lesson. The lesson opened in this wise.

"I don't know when I first began to know that I was different from all other children," she said in a soft, hot voice—if a voice can express heat. "Perhaps a child who has nothing—nothing—is obliged to begin to THINK before it knows what thoughts are. If they play and are loved and amused they have no time for anything but growing and being happy. You never saw the dreadful little rooms upstairs——"

"Dowie has told me of them," said Mademoiselle.

"Another child might have forgotten them. I never shall. I—I was so little and they were full of something awful. It was loneliness. The first time Andrews pinched me was one day when the thing frightened me and I suddenly began to cry quite loud. I used to stare out of the window and—I don't know when I noticed it first—I could see the children being taken out by their nurses. And there were always two or three of them and they laughed and talked and skipped. The nurses used to laugh and talk too. Andrews never did. When she took me to the gardens the other nurses sat together and chattered and their children played games with other children. Once a little girl began to talk to me and her nurse called her away. Andrews was very angry and jerked me by my arm and told me that if ever I spoke to a child again she would pinch me."

"Devil!" exclaimed the Frenchwoman.

"I used to think and think, but I could never understand. How could I?"

"A baby!" cried Mademoiselle Valle and she got up and took her in her arms and kissed her. "Chere petite ange!" she murmured. When she sat down again her cheeks were wet. Robin's were wet also, but she touched them with her handkerchief quickly and dried them. It was as if she had faltered for a moment in her lesson.

"Did Dowie ever tell you anything about Donal?" she asked hesitatingly.

"Something. He was the little boy you played with?"

"Yes. He was the first human creature," she said it very slowly as if trying to find the right words to express what she meant, "—the first HUMAN creature I had ever known. You see Mademoiselle, he—he knew everything. He had always been happy, he BELONGED to people and things. I belonged to nobody and nothing. If I had been like him he would not have seemed so wonderful to me. I was in a kind of delirium of joy. If a creature who had been deaf dumb and blind had suddenly awakened, and seeing on a summer day in a world full of flowers and sun—it might have seemed to them as it seemed to me."

"You have remembered it through all the years," said Mademoiselle, "like that?"

"It was the first time I became alive. One could not forget it. We only played as children play but—it WAS a delirium of joy. I could not bear to go to sleep at night and forget it for a moment. Yes, I remember it—like that. There is a dream I have every now and then and it is more real than—than this is—" with a wave of her hand about her. "I am always in a real garden playing with a real Donal. And his eyes—his eyes—" she paused and thought, "There is a look in them that is like—it is just like—that first morning."

The change which passed over her face the next moment might have been said to seem to obliterate all trace of the childish memory.

"He was taken away by his mother. That was the beginning of my finding out," she said. "I heard Andrews talking to her sister and in a baby way I gathered that Lord Coombe had sent him. I hated Lord Coombe for years before I found out that he hadn't—and that there was another reason. After that it took time to puzzle things out and piece them together. But at last I found out what the reason had been. Then I began to make plans. These are not my rooms," glancing about her again, "—these are not my clothes," with a little pull at her dress. "I'm not 'a strong character', Mademoiselle, as I wanted to be, but I haven't one little regret—not one." She kneeled down and put her arms round her old friend's waist, lifting her face. "I'm like a leaf blown about by the wind. I don't know what it will do with me. Where do leaves go? One never knows really."

She put her face down on Mademoiselle's knee then and cried with soft bitterness.

When she bade her good-bye at Charing Cross Station and stood and watched the train until it was quite out of sight, afterwards she went back to the rooms for which she felt no regrets. And before she went to bed that night Feather came and gave her farewell maternal advice and warning.



CHAPTER XXVIII



That a previously scarcely suspected daughter of Mrs. Gareth-Lawless had become a member of the household of the Dowager Duchess of Darte stirred but a passing wave of interest in a circle which was not that of Mrs. Gareth-Lawless herself and which upon the whole but casually acknowledged its curious existence as a modern abnormality. Also the attitude of the Duchess herself was composedly free from any admission of necessity for comment.

"I have no pretty young relative who can be spared to come and live with me. I am fond of things pretty and young and I am greatly pleased with what a kind chance put in my way," she said. In her discussion of the situation with Coombe she measured it with her customary fine acumen.

"Forty years ago it could not have been done. The girl would have been made uncomfortable and outside things could not have been prevented from dragging themselves in. Filial piety in the mass would have demanded that the mother should be accounted for. Now a genial knowledge of a variety in mothers leaves Mrs. Gareth-Lawless to play about with her own probably quite amusing set. Once poor Robin would have been held responsible for her and so should I. My position would have seemed to defy serious moral issues. But we have reached a sane habit of detaching people from their relations. A nice condition we should be in if we had not."

"You, of course, know that Henry died suddenly in some sort of fit at Ostend." Coombe said it as if in a form of reply. She had naturally become aware of it when the rest of the world did, but had not seen him since the event.

"One did not suppose his constitution would have lasted so long," she answered. "You are more fortunate in young Donal Muir. Have you seen him and his mother?"

"I made a special journey to Braemarnie and had a curious interview with Mrs. Muir. When I say 'curious' I don't mean to imply that it was not entirely dignified. It was curious only because I realize that secretly she regards with horror and dread the fact that her boy is the prospective Head of the House of Coombe. She does not make a jest of it as I have had the temerity to do. It's a cheap defense, this trick of making an eternal jest of things, but it IS a defense and one has formed the habit."

"She has never done it—Helen Muir," his friend said. "On the whole I believe she at times knows that she has been too grave. She was a beautiful creature passionately in love with her husband. When such a husband is taken away from such a woman and his child is left it often happens that the flood of her love is turned into one current and that it is almost overwhelming. She is too sane to have coddled the boy and made him effeminate—what has she done instead?"

"He is a splendid young Highlander. He would be too good-looking if he were not as strong and active as a young stag. All she has done is to so fill him with the power and sense of her charm that he has not seen enough of the world or learned to care for it. She is the one woman on earth for him and life with her at Braemarnie is all he asks for."

"Your difficulty will be that she will not be willing to trust him to your instructions."

"I have not as much personal vanity as I may seem to have," Coombe said. "I put all egotism modestly aside when I talked to her and tried to explain that I would endeavour to see that he came to no harm in my society. My heir presumptive and I must see something of each other and he must become intimate with the prospect of his responsibilities. More will be demanded of the next Marquis of Coombe than has been demanded of me. And it will be DEMANDED not merely hoped for or expected. And it will be the overwhelming forces of Fate which will demand it—not mere tenants or constituents or the general public."

"Have you any views as to WHAT will be demanded?" was her interested question.

"None. Neither has anyone else who shares my opinion. No one will have any until the readjustment comes. But before the readjustment there will be the pouring forth of blood—the blood of magnificent lads like Donal Muir—perhaps his own blood,—my God!"

"And there may be left no head of the house of Coombe," from the Duchess.

"There will be many a house left without its head—houses great and small. And if the peril of it were more generally foreseen at this date it would be less perilous than it is."

"Lads like that!" said the old Duchess bitterly. "Lads in their strength and joy and bloom! It is hideous."

"In all their young virility and promise for a next generation—the strong young fathers of forever unborn millions! It's damnable! And it will be so not only in England, but all over a blood drenched world."

It was in this way they talked to each other of the black tragedy for which they believed the world's stage already being set in secret, and though there were here and there others who felt the ominous inevitability of the raising of the curtain, the rest of the world looked on in careless indifference to the significance of the open training of its actors and even the resounding hammerings of its stage carpenters and builders. In these days the two discussed the matter more frequently and even in the tone of those who waited for the approach of a thing drawing nearer every day.

Each time the Head of the House of Coombe made one of his so-called "week end" visits to the parts an Englishman can reach only by crossing the Channel, he returned with new knowledge of the special direction in which the wind veered in the blowing of those straws he had so long observed with absorbed interest.

"Above all the common sounds of daily human life one hears in that one land the rattle and clash of arms and the unending thudding tread of marching feet," he said after one such visit. "Two generations of men creatures bred and born and trained to live as parts of a huge death dealing machine have resulted in a monstrous construction. Each man is a part of it and each part's greatest ambition is to respond to the shouted word of command as a mechanical puppet responds to the touch of a spring. To each unit of the millions, love of his own country means only hatred of all others and the belief that no other should be allowed existence. The sacred creed of each is that the immensity of Germany is such that there can be no room on the earth for another than itself. Blood and iron will clear the world of the inferior peoples. To the masses that is their God's will. Their God is an understudy of their Kaiser."