"Don't be timid, my dearie," Dowie whispered back. "His lordship will be ready for us now we've come."
His lordship was ready. He came forward to meet them and when he did so, Robin knew—though he seemed to be part of the dimness and to come out of a dream—that she need feel no further uncertainties or fears. That which was to take place would move forward without let or hindrance to its end. That was what one always felt in his presence.
In a few minutes they were standing in a part of the church which would have seemed darker than any other shadow-filled corner but that a dim light burned on a small altar and a clergyman whose white vestments made him look wraithlike and very tall waited before it and after a few moments of solemn silence began to read from the prayer book he held in his hand.
There were strange passings and repassings through Robin's mind as she made her low responses—memories of the hours when she had asked herself if she were still alive—if she were not dead as Donal was, but walking about without having found it out. It was as though this must be true now and her own voice and Lord Coombe's and the clergyman's only ghosts' voices. They were so low and unlike real voices and when they floated away among the shadows, low ghastly echoes seemed to float with them.
"I will," she heard herself say, and also other things the clergyman told her to repeat after him and when Lord Coombe spoke she could scarcely understand because it was all like a dream and did not matter.
Once she turned so cold and white and trembled so that Dowie made an involuntary movement towards her, but Lord Coombe's quiet firmness held her swaying body and though the clergyman paused a moment the trembling passed away and the ceremony went on. She had begun to tremble because she remembered that the other marriage had seemed like a dream in another world than this—a world which was so alive that she had trembled and thrilled with exquisite living. And because Donal knew how frightened she was he had stood so close to her that she had felt the dear warmness of his body. And he had held her hand quite tight when he took it and his "I will" had been beautiful and clear. And when he had put on the borrowed ring he had drawn her eyes up to the blue tarn of his own. Donal was killed! Perhaps the young chaplain had been killed too. And she was being married to Lord Coombe who was an old man and did not stand close to her, whose hand scarcely held hers at all—but who was putting on a ring.
Her eyes—her hunted young doe's eyes—lifted themselves. Lord Coombe met them and understood. Strangely she knew he understood—that he knew what she was thinking about. For that one moment there came into his eyes a look which might not have been his own, and vaguely she knew that it held strange understanding and he was sorry for her—and for Donal and for everything in the world.