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The blow which had come to her at the end of a long life had, as it were, felled her as a tree might have been felled in Mersham Wood. As the tree might have lain for a short time with its leaves still seeming alive on its branches so she seemed living. But she had been severed from her root. She listened to the girl's sobbing and stroked her hair. "Don't be afraid.
"He says it ought to be hid some way because if the cheap trippers found it out they'd wear the life out of me with pestering me to give 'em six-penny teas. They'd get none from me!" quite fiercely. "Her grace give it to me her own self and it's on Mersham land and not a lawyer on earth could put me out."
She looked as if she were wondering at something and the wondering was almost tender. "We know what to do. But it must be done without delay," said Lord Coombe and his voice reminded her of Mersham Wood. "Come nearer to me. Come quite close. I want " the Duchess did not explain what she wanted but she pointed to a small square ottoman which would place Robin almost at her knee.
"I have seen it," was the Duchess' interpolation. "I saw it when she went upon her knees and prayed that I would let her go to Mersham Wood. There was something inexplicable in her remoteness from fear and shame. She was only woe's self. I did not comprehend. I was merely a baffled old woman of the world. Now I begin to see. I believe her as you do.
Bennett's cottage on the edge of Mersham Wood seemed to Robin when she first saw it to be only a part of a fairy tale.
What he had done this morning was to go to Mersham Wood to see Mrs. Bennett. There were things it might be possible to learn by amiable and carefully considered expression of interest in her loss and loneliness.
It was all frightening and unreal." She had not dreamed of asking questions. Donal had taken care of her and tried to help her to be less afraid of seeing people who might recognise her. She had tilted her hat over her face and worn a veil. She had gone home to Eaton Square and then in the afternoon to the cottage at Mersham Wood. They had not written letters to each other.
When she worked she might be doing things which might somehow reach Donal or boys like Donal. Howsoever long her life was she knew one thing would never be blotted out by time the day she went down to Mersham Wood to see Mrs. Bennett, whose three grandsons had been killed within a few days of each other. She had received the news in one telegram.
She has the ecstasied air of a lovely child on her birthday with all her world filled with petting and birthday gifts." The Duchess evidently extended her care to the extent of sending special messages to Mrs. James, the housekeeper, who began to exercise a motherly surveillance over Robin's health and diet and warmly to advocate long walks and country visits to the cottage at Mersham Wood.
He had been doing it for some time and he had told her from beginning to end the singular story of what had happened when he found Robin lying face downward on the moss in Mersham Wood. This is what he was saying in a low, steady voice. "She had not once thought of what most women would have thought of before anything else.
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