She put out her shaking hand and touched his sleeve, watching his face as if something in it awed her.
"You loved him?" She whispered it. But Robin heard.
"I did not know I had loved anything—but I suppose that has been it. His physical perfection attracted me at first—his extraordinary contrast to Henry. It was mere pride in him as an heir and successor. Afterwards it was a beautiful look his young blue eyes had. Beautiful seems an unmasculine word for such a masculine lad, but no other word expresses it. It was a sort of valiant brightness and joy in living and being friends with the world. I saw it every time he came to talk to me. I wished he were my son. I even tried to think of him as my son." He uttered a curious low sound like a sudden groan, "My son has been killed."
When he was about to leave the house and stood in the candle-lighted hall he was thinking of many dark things which passed unformedly through his mind and made him move slowly. He was slow in his movements as the elderly maid servant assisted him to put on his overcoat, and he was as slowly drawing on his gloves when his eyes—slow also—travelled up the staircase and stopped at the first landing, where he seemed to see an indefinite heap of something lying.
"Am I mistaken or is—something—lying on the landing?" he said to the woman.
The fact that he was impelled to make the inquiry seemed to him part of his abnormal state of mind. What affair of his after all were curiously dropped bundles upon his hostess' staircase? But—
"Please go and look at it," he added, and the woman gave him a troubled look and went up the stairs.
He himself was only a moment behind her. He actually found himself following her as if he were guessing something. When the maid cried out, he vaguely knew what he had been guessing.
"Oh!" the woman gasped, bending down. "It's poor little Miss Lawless! Oh, my lord," wildly after a nearer glance, "She looks as if she was dead!"