not matter to you," he answered. "It chances for the time being
to matter to _me_."

Mademoiselle Valle 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 Valle 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