Chapter 16 - Page 2

Donal you want, poor child--no one else," it said.

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

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

But she did not answer.

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

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

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

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

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

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

But Robin was thinking only of Donal.

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

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

The sobbing broke forth again.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

She did not speak.

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