im look wraithlike and very tall waited before it and after a few
moments of solemn silence began to read from the prayer book he held in
his hand.

There were strange passings and repassings through Robin's mind as she
made her low responses--memories of the hours when she had asked herself
if she were still alive--if she were not dead as Donal was, but walking
about without having found it out. It was as though this must be true
now and her own voice and Lord Coombe's and the clergyman's only ghosts'
voices. They were so low and unlike real voices and when they floated
away among the shadows, low ghastly echoes seemed to float with them.

"I will," she heard herself say, and also other things the clergyman
told her to repeat after him and when Lord Coombe spoke she could
scarcely understand because it was all like a dream and did not matter.

Once she turned so cold and white and trembled so that Dowie made an
involuntary movement towards her, but Lord Coombe's quiet firmness held
her swaying body and though the clergyman paused a moment the trembling
passed away and the ceremony went on. She had begun to tremble because
she remembered that the other marriage had seemed like a dream in
another world than this--a world which was so alive that she had
trembled and thrilled with exquisite living. And because Donal knew how
frightened she was he had stood so close to her that she had felt the
dear warmness of his body. And he had held her hand quite tight when he
took it and his "I will" had been beautiful and clear. And when he had
put on the borrowed ring he had drawn her eyes up to the blue tarn of
his own. Donal was killed! Perhaps the young chaplain had been killed
too. And she was being married to Lord Coombe who was an old man and did
not stand close to her, whose hand scarcely held hers at all--but who
was putting on a ring.

Her eyes--her hunted young doe's eyes--lifted themselves. Lord Coombe
met them and understood. Strangely she knew he understood--that he knew
what she was thinking about. For that one moment there came into his
eyes a look which might not have been his own, and vaguely she knew that
it held strange understanding and he was sorry for her--and for Donal
and for everything in the world.

CHAPTER XXIV

The little feudal fastness in the Highlands which was called Darreuch
Castle--when it was mentioned by any one, which was rarely--had been
little more than a small ruin when Lord Coom