Robin | Page 5

pinch me! But--No--No!"
She kept her hands behind her back and hatred surged up in her soul.
In spite of her tender years, the doctor held to the theory that Robin had
suffered a shock; she must be taken away to be helped by the bracing
air of the Norfolk coast. Before she went, workmen were to be seen
coming in and out of the house. When she returned to London, she was
led into rooms she had never been in before--light and airy rooms with
pretty walls and furniture.

It was "a whim of Coombe's," as Feather put it, that she should no
longer occupy the little dog-kennels of nurseries, so these new
apartments had been added in the rear. A whim of his also that
Andrews, whose disciplinary methods included pinching, should be
dismissed and replaced by Dowson, a motherly creature with a great
deal of common sense. Robin's lonely little heart opened to her new
nurse, who became in time her "Dowie."
It was Dowson who made it clear to Lord Coombe, at length, that
Robin had reached the age when she needed a governess, and it was he
who said to Feather a few days later:
"A governess will come here to-morrow at eleven o'clock. She is a
Mademoiselle Vallé. She is accustomed to the education of young
children. She will present herself for your approval."
"What on earth can it matter?" Feather cried.
"It does not matter to you," he answered. "It chances for the time being
to matter to me."
Mademoiselle Vallé was an intelligent, mature French woman, with a
peculiar power to grasp an intricate situation. She learned to love the
child she taught--a child so strangely alone. As time went on she came
to know that Robin was to receive every educational advantage, every
instruction. In his impersonal, aloof way Coombe was fixed in his
intention to provide her with life's defences. As she grew, graceful as a
willow wand, into a girlhood startlingly lovely, she learned modern
languages, learned to dance divinely.
And all the while he was deeply conscious that her infant hatred had
not lessened--that he could show her no reason why it should.
There were black hours when she was in deadly peril from a human
beast, mad with her beauty. Coombe had almost miraculously saved her,
but her detestation of him still held.
Her one thought--her one hope--was to learn--learn, so that she might

make her own living. Mademoiselle Vallé supported her in this, and
Coombe understood.
* * * * *
In one of the older London squares there was a house upon the broad
doorsteps of which Lord Coombe stood oftener than upon any other.
The old Dowager Duchess of Darte, having surrounded herself with
almost royal dignity, occupied that house in an enforced seclusion. She
was a confirmed rheumatic invalid, but her soul was as strong as it was
many years before, when she had given its support to Coombe in his
unbearable hours. She had poured out her strength in silence, and in
silence he had received it. She saved him from slipping over the verge
of madness.
But there came a day when he spoke to her of this--of the one woman
he had loved, Princess Alixe of X----:
"There was never a human thing so transparently pure, and she was the
possession of a brute incarnate. She shook with terror before him. He
killed her."
"I believe he did," she said, unsteadily. "He was not received here at
Court afterward."
"He killed her. But she would have died of horror if he had not struck
her a blow. I saw that. I was in attendance on him at Windsor."
"When I first knew you," the Duchess said gravely.
"There was a night--I was young--young--when I found myself face to
face with her in the stillness of the wood. I went quite mad for a time. I
threw myself face downward on the earth and sobbed. She knelt and
prayed for her own soul as well as mine. I kissed the hem of her dress
and left her standing--alone."
After a silence he added:

"It was the next night that I heard her shrieks. Then she died."
The Duchess knew what else had died: the high adventure of youth and
joy of life in him.
On a table beside her winged chair were photographs of two women,
who, while obviously belonging to periods of some twenty years apart,
were in face and form so singularly alike that they might have been the
same person. One was the Princess Alixe of X---- and the
other--Feather.
"The devil of chance," Coombe said, "sometimes chooses to play tricks.
Such a trick was played on me."
It was the photograph of Feather he took up and set a strange