Chapter 19

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

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

But Robin only kissed her as lovingly as a child.

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

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

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

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

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

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

But as she was fastening the little hooks and buttons her stunned brain
went on with the thought to which it had begun to awaken in the train.
Since the hour when she had fallen unconscious on the landing she had