longing to fly to the Wood as if it were a living
human thing who would hear her and understand--as if it would be like
arms enclosing her. Something would be there listening and she could
talk to it and ask it what to do.

She had spoken to it as she staggered down the path--she had cried out
to it with wild broken words, and then when she heard nothing she had
fallen down upon the earth and the sobbing--sobbing--had begun.

"Donal!" she said. "Donal!" And again, "Donal!" over and over. But
nothing answered, for even that which had been Donal--with the heavenly
laugh and the blue in his gay eyes and the fine, long smooth hands--had
been blown to fragments in a field somewhere--and there was nothing
anywhere.

* * * * *

She had heard no footsteps and she was sobbing still when a voice spoke
at her side--the voice of some one standing near.

"It is Donal you want, poor child--no one else," it said.

That it should be this voice--Lord Coombe's! And that amazing as it was
to hear it, she was not amazed and did not care! Her sobbing ceased so
far as sobbing can cease on full flow. She lay still but for low
shuddering breaths.

"I have come because it is Donal," he said. "You told me once that you
had always hated me. Hatred is useless now. Don't feel it."

But she did not answer.

"You probably will not believe anything I say. Well I must speak to you
whether you believe me or not."

She lay still and he himself was silent. His voice seemed to be a sudden
thing when he spoke.

"I loved him too. I found it out the morning I saw him march away."

He had seen him! Since she had looked at his beautiful face this man had
looked at it!

"You!" She sat up on the earth and gazed, swaying. So he knew he could
go on.

"I wanted a son. I once lay on the moss in a wood and sobbed as you have
sobbed. _She_ was killed too."

But Robin was thinking only of Donal.

"What--was his face like? Did you--see him near?"

"Quite near. I stood on the street. I followed. He did not see me. He
saw nothing."

The sobbing broke forth again.

"Did--did his eyes look as if he had been crying? He did cry--he did!"

The Head of the House of Coombe showed no muscular facial sign of
emotion and stood stiffly still. But what was this which leaped scalding
to his glazed eyes and felt hot?

"Yes," he answered huskily. "I saw--even as he marched past--that his
eyes were heavy and had circles round them