his--whether
his father had married you or not. Most women love their children."

Robin sat very still. The stunned brain was slowly working for itself.

"A child whose mother seems bad--is very lonely," she said.

"It is not likely to have many friends."

"It seems to belong to no one. It _must_ be unhappy. If--Donal's mother
had not been married--even he would have been unhappy."

No one made any reply.

"If he had been poor it would have made it even worse. If he had
belonged to nobody and had been poor too--! How could he have borne it!"

Lord Coombe took the matter up gently, as it were removing it from the
Duchess' hands.

"But he had everything he wished for from his birth," he said. "He was
always happy. I like to remember the look in his eyes. Thank God for
it!"

"That beautiful look!" she cried. "That beautiful laughing look--as if
all the world were joyful!"

"Thank God for it," Coombe said again. "I once knew a wretched village
boy who had no legal father though his mother swore she had been
married. His eyes looked like a hunted ferret's. It was through being
shamed and flouted and bullied. The village lads used to shout 'Bastard'
after him."

It was then that the baying of the hounds suddenly seemed at hand. The
large eyes quailed before the stark emptiness of the space they gazed
into.

"What shall I do--what shall I do?" Robin said and having said it she
did not know that she turned to Lord Coombe.

"You must try to do what we tell you to do--even if you do not wish to
do it," he said. "It shall be made as little difficult for you as is
possible."

The expression of the Duchess as she looked on and heard was a changing
one because her mind included so many aspects of the singular situation.
She had thought it not unlikely that he would do something unusual.
Could anything much more unusual have been provided than that a man, who
had absolute splendour of rank and wealth to offer, should for strange
reasons of his own use the tact of courts and the fine astuteness of
diplomatists in preparing the way to offer marriage to a penniless,
friendless and disgraced young "companion" in what is known as
"trouble"? It was because he was himself that he understood what he was
dealing with--that splendour and safety would hold no lure, that
protection from disgrace counted as nothing, that only one thing had
existence and meaning for her. And even as this passed through her mind,
Robin's answer re