"It's Miss Robin that trouble's come to," involuntarily broke from her.
"A trouble she must be protected in. She cannot protect herself." For a few seconds he sat and looked at her very steadily. It was as though he were asking a question. Dowie did not know she was going to rise from her chair. But for some reason she got up and stood quite firmly before him. And her good heart went thump-thump-thump.
"Your lordship," she said and in spite of the thumping her voice actually did not shake. "It was one of those War weddings. And perhaps he's dead."
Then it was Lord Coombe who left his chair.
"Thank you, Dowie," he said and before he began to walk up and down the tiny room she felt as if he made a slight bow to her.
She had said something that he had wished her to say. She had removed some trying barrier for him instead of obliging him to help her to cross it and perhaps stumbling on her way. She had neither stumbled nor clambered, she had swept it away out of his path and hers. That was because she knew Miss Robin and had known her from her babyhood.
Though for some time he walked to and fro slowly as he talked she saw that it was easier for him to complete the relation of his story. But as it proceeded it was necessary for her to make an effort to recall herself to a realisation of the atmosphere of the parlour and the narrow street outside the window—and she was glad to be assisted by the amiable rumble of Mr. Jenkinson's voice as heard from the back room when she found herself involuntarily leaning forward in her chair, vaguely conscious that she was drawing short breaths, as she listened to what he was telling her. The things she was listening to stood out from a background of unreality so startling. She was even faintly tormented by shadowy memories of a play she had seen years ago at Drury Lane. And Drury Lane incidents were of a world so incongruously remote from the house in Eaton Square and her grace's clever aquiline ivory face—and his lordship with his quiet bearing and his unromantic and elderly, tired fineness. And yet he was going to undertake to do a thing which was of the order of deed the sober everyday mind could only expect from the race of persons known as "heroes" in theatres and in books. And he was noticeably and wholly untheatrical about it. His plans were those of a farseeing and practical man in every detail. To Dowie the working perfection of his preparations was amazing. They included every contingency and seemed to forget nothing and ignore no possibility. He had thought of things the cleverest woman might have thought of, he had achieved effects as only a sensible man accustomed to power and obedience could have achieved them. And from first to last he kept before Dowie the one thing which held the strongest appeal. In her helpless heartbreak and tragedy Robin needed her as she needed no one else in the world.
"She is so broken and weakened that she may not live," he said in the end. "No one can care for her as you can."
"I can care for her, poor lamb. I'll come when your lordship's ready for me, be it soon or late."
"Thank you, Dowie," he said again. "It will be soon."