"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 pa.s.sed unformedly through his mind and made him move slowly. He was slow in his movements as the elderly maid servant a.s.sisted 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 sh.e.l.l 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 pa.s.sed 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 pa.s.sed--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 d.u.c.h.ess 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 d.u.c.h.ess 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 d.u.c.h.ess 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 d.u.c.h.ess in her. The d.u.c.h.ess 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 amus.e.m.e.nt 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 d.u.c.h.ess said.

"Visits to old women in remote country places are not stimulating enough. Has she had _no_ companions?"

"I tried--" said the d.u.c.h.ess 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 s.p.a.ce.

"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 d.u.c.h.ess 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.