an you do it?" she asked again.

"I can marry you," his clear, aloof voice replied.

"You!--You!--You!" she only breathed it out--but it was a cry.

Then he held up his hand as if to calm her.

"I told you in the wood that hatred was useless now and that your reason
for hating me had no foundation. I know how you will abhor what I
suggest. But it will not be as bad as it seems. You need not even endure
the ignominy of being known as the Marchioness of Coombe. But when I am
dead Donal's son will be my successor. It will not be held against him
that I married his beautiful young mother and chose to keep the matter a
secret. I have long been known as a peculiar person given to arranging
my affairs according to my own liking. The Head of the House of
Coombe"--with an ironic twitch of the mouth--"will have the law on his
side and will not be asked for explanations. A romantic story will add
to public interest in him. If your child is a daughter she will be
protected. She will not be lonely, she will have friends. She will have
all the chances of happiness a girl naturally longs for--all of them.
Because you are her mother."

Robin rose and stood before him as involuntarily as she had risen
before, but now she looked different. Her hands were wrung together and
she was the blanched embodiment of terror. She remembered things
Fraeulein Hirsh had said.

"I could not marry you--if I were to be killed because I didn't," was
all she could say. Because marriage had meant only Donal and the dream,
and being saved from the world this one man had represented to her girl
mind.

"You say that because you have no doubt heard that it has been rumoured
that I have a depraved old man's fancy for you and that I have always
hoped to marry you. That is as false as the other story I denied. I am
not in love with you even in an antediluvian way. You would not marry me
for your own sake. That goes without saying. But I will repeat what I
said in the Wood when you told me you would believe me. There is
Something--not you--not Donal--to be saved from suffering."

"That is true," the Duchess said and put out her hand as before. "And
there is something longer drawn out and more miserable than mere
dying--a dreary outcast sort of life. We know more about such things
than you do."

"You may better comprehend my action if I add a purely selfish reason
for it," Coombe went on. "I will give you one. I do not wish to be the
last Marquis of Coomb