be made to
forget. He must hear of nothing but happiness. There is happiness before
him--enough to force him to forget. You will accept anything he tells
you as if it were a natural thing?"

"Accept!" she cried. "What would I _not_ accept, praising God! You are
preparing me for something. Ah! don't, don't be afraid! But--is it
maiming--darkness?"

"No! No! It is a perfect thing. You must know it before you see him--and
be ready. Before he went to the Front he was married."

"Married!" in a mere breath.

Coombe went on in quick sentences. She must be prepared and she could
bear anything in the rapture of her joy.

"He married in secret a lonely child whom the Dowager Duchess of Darte
had taken into her household. We have both taken charge of her since we
discovered she was his wife. We thought she was his widow. She has a
son. Before her marriage she was Robin Gareth-Lawless."

"Ah!" she cried brokenly. "He would have told me--he wanted to tell
me--but he could not--because I was so hard! Oh! poor motherless
children!"

"You never were hard, I could swear," Coombe said. "But perhaps you have
changed--as I have. If he had not thought I was hard he might have told
me-- Shall we go to him at once?"

Together they went without a moment's delay.

CHAPTER XLII

The dream had come back and Robin walked about the moor carrying her
baby in her arms, even though Dowie followed her. She laid him on the
heather and let him listen to the skylarks and there was in her face
such a look, that, in times past if she had seen it, Dowie would have
believed that it could only mean translation from earth.

But when Lord Coombe came for a brief visit he took Dowie to walk alone
with him upon the moor. When they set out together she found herself
involuntarily stealing furtive sidelong glances at him. There was that
in his face which drew her eyes in spite of her. It was a look so
intense and new that once she caught her breath, trembling. It was then
that he turned to look at her and began to talk. He began--and went
on--and as she listened there came to her sudden flooding tears and more
than once a loud startled sob of joy.

"But he begs that she shall not see him until he is less ghastly to
behold. He says the memory of such a face would tell her things she must
never know. His one thought is that she must not know. Things happen to
a man's nerves when he has seen and borne the ultimate horrors. Men have
gone mad