Chapter 25 - Page 2

"I could only _remember_," the broken heart-wringing voice went on. "And
it seemed as if the remembering was killing me over and over again-- It
is like that now. But in the Wood Lord Coombe said something
strange--which seemed to make me begin to think a little. Only it was
like beginning to try to write with a broken arm. I can't go on--I can
only think of Donal-- And be lonely--lonely--lonely."

The very words--the mere sound of them in her own ears made her voice
trail away into bitter helpless crying--which would not stop. It was the
awful weeping of utter woe and weakness whose convulsive sobs go on and
on until they almost cease to seem human sounds. Dowie's practical
knowledge told her what she had to face. This was what she had guessed
at when she had known that there had been crying in the night. Mere
soothing of the tenderest would not check it.

"I had been lonely--always-- And then the loneliness was gone. And
then--! If it had never gone--!"

"I know, my dear, I know," said Dowie watching her with practised,
anxious eye. And she went away for a few moments and came back with an
unobtrusive calming draught and coaxed her into taking it and sat down
and prayed as she held the little hands which unknowingly beat upon the
pillow. Something of her steadiness and love flowed from her through her
own warm restraining palms and something in her tender steady voice
spoke for and helped her--though it seemed long and long before the
cruelty of the storm had lessened and the shadow of a body under the
bed-clothes lay deadly still and the heavy eyelids closed as if they
would never lift again.

Dowie did not leave her for an hour or more but sat by her bedside and
watched. Like this had been the crying in the night. And she had been
alone.

* * * * *

As she sat and watched she thought deeply after her lights. She did not
think only of the sweet shattered thing she so well loved. She thought
much of Lord Coombe. Being a relic of a class which may be regarded as
forever extinct, her views on the subject of the rights and
responsibilities of rank were of an unswerving reverence verging on the
feudal. Even in early days her perfection of type was rare. To her
unwavering mind the remarkable story she had become a part of was almost
august in its subjection of ordinary views to the future of a great
house and its noble name. With the world falling to pieces and great
houses crumbling into nothingness, that this one should be rescued from
the general holocaust was a deed worthy of its head. But where was there
another man who would have done this thing as he had done it--remaining
totally indifferent to the ignominy which would fall