Chapter 39

Six weeks later Coombe was driven again up the climbing road to
Darreuch. There was something less of colour than usual in his face, but
the slightly vivid look of shock observing persons had been commenting
upon had died out. As he had travelled, leaning back upon the cushions
of the railway carriage, he had kept his eyes closed for the greater
part of the journey. When at last he began to open them and look out at
the increasingly beautiful country he also began to look rested and
calm. He already felt the nearing peace of the shrine and added to it
was an immense relaxing and uplift. A girl of a type entirely different
from Robin's might, he knew, have made him feel during the past months
as if he were taking part in a melodrama. This she had wholly saved him
from by the clear simplicity of her natural acceptance of all things as
they were. She had taken and given without a word. He was, as it were,
going home to her now, as deeply thrilled and moved as a totally
different type of man might have gone--a man who was simpler.

The things he might once have been and felt were at work within him.
Again he longed to see the girl--he _wanted_ to see her. He was going to
the castle in response to a telegram from Dowie. All was well over. She
was safe. For the rest, all calamity had been kept from her knowledge
and, as he had arranged it, the worst would never reach her. In course
of time she would learn all it was necessary that she should know of her
mother's death.

When Mrs. Macaur led him to one of his own rooms she glowed red and
expectantly triumphant.

"The young lady, your lordship--it was wonderfu'!"

But before she had time to say more Dowie had appeared and her face was
smooth and serene to marvellousness.

"The Almighty himself has been in this place, my lord," she said
devoutly. "I didn't send more than a word, because she's like a
schoolroom child about it. She wants to tell you herself." The woman was
quivering with pure joy.

"May I see her?"

"She's waiting, my lord."

Honey scents of gorse and heather blew softly through the open windows
of the room he was taken to. He did not know enough of such things to be
at all sure what he had expected to see--but what he moved quickly
towards, the moment after his entrance, was Robin lying fair as a wild
rose on her pillows--not pale, not tragic, but with her eyes wide and
radiant as a shining child's.

Her smiling made his heart stand still. He really could not speak. But
she could and turned back the covering to show him what lay in her soft
curved arm.

"He is not like me at all," was her joyous exulting. "He is exactly like