“Neither do I—except that it is founded on a distinct dislike,” said Coombe. There was a brief pause. “Are you fond of toys yourself, Dowson?” he inquired coldly.
“I am that—and I know how to choose them, your lordship,” replied Dowson, with a large, shrewd intelligence.
“Then oblige me by throwing away the doll and its accompaniments and buying some toys for yourself, at my expense. You can present them to Miss Robin as a personal gift. She will accept them from you.”
He passed on his way and Dowson looked after him interestedly.
“If she was his,” she thought, “I shouldn’t be puzzled. But she’s not—that I’ve ever heard of. He’s got some fancy of his own the same as Robin has, though you wouldn’t think it to look at him. I’d like to know what it is.”
It was a fancy—an old, old fancy—it harked back nearly thirty years—to the dark days of youth and passion and unending tragedy whose anguish, as it then seemed, could never pass—but which, nevertheless, had faded with the years as they flowed by. And yet left him as he was and had been. He was not sentimental about it, he smiled at himself drearily—though never at the memory—when it rose again and, through its vague power, led him to do strange things curiously verging on the emotional and eccentric. But even the child—who quite loathed him for some fantastic infant reason of her own—even the child had her part in it. His soul oddly withdrew itself into a far remoteness as he walked away and Piccadilly became a shadow and a dream.
Dowson went home and began to pack neatly in a box the neglected doll and the toys which had accompanied her. Robin seeing her doing it, asked a question.
“Are they going back to the shop?”
“No. Lord Coombe is letting me give them to a little girl who is very poor and has to lie in bed because her back hurts her. His lordship is so kind he does not want you to be troubled with them. He is not angry. He is too good to be angry.”
That was not true, thought Robin. He had done that thing she remembered! Goodness could not have done it. Only badness.