Robin was there and each night she believed that a dead man came to her a seeming living being. He was not like Dowie, but his realisation of the mystery of this thing touched his nerves as a wild unexplainable sound heard in the darkness at midnight might have done. He wondered if he should see some look which was not quite normal in her eyes and hear some unearthly note in her voice. Physically the effect upon her had been good, but might he not be aware of the presence of some mental sign?
"I think you'll be amazed when you see her, my lord," said Dowie, who met him. "I am myself, every day."
She led him up to the Tower room and when he entered it Robin was sitting by a window sewing with her eyelids dropped as he had pictured them. The truth was that Dowie had not previously announced him because she had wanted him to come upon just this.
Robin rose from her chair and laid her bit of sewing aside. For a moment he almost expected her to make the little curtsey Mademoiselle had taught her to make when older people came into the schoolroom. She looked so exactly as she had looked before life had touched her. There was very little change in her girlish figure; the child curve of her cheek had returned; the Jacqueminot rose glowed on it and her eyes were liquid wonders of trust. She came to him holding out both hands.
"Thank you for coming," she said in her pretty way. "Thank you, Lord Coombe, for coming."
"Thank you, my child, for asking me to come," he answered and he feared that his voice was not wholly steady.
There was no mystic sign to be seen about her. The only mystery was in her absolutely blooming health and naturalness and in the gentle and clear happiness of her voice and eyes. She was not tired; she was not dragged or anxious looking as he had seen even fortunate young wives and mothers at times. There actually flashed back upon him the morning, months ago, when he had met her in the street and said to himself that she was like a lovely child on her birthday with all her gifts about her. Her radiance had been quiet even then because she was always quiet.
She led him to a seat near her window and she sat by him.
"I put this chair here for you because it is so lovely to look out at the moor," she said.
That moved him to begin with. She had been thinking simply and kindly of him even before he came. He had always been prepared for, waited upon either with flattering attentions or ceremonial service, but the quiet pretty things mothers and sisters and wives did had not been part of his life and he had always noticed and liked them and sometimes wondered that most men received them with a casual air. This small thing alone caused the roar he had left behind to recede still farther.