As quickly as Robin's strong arms could bear her, she was carried gently into the kitchen and laid in Robin's own deep arm-chair by the fire. Roused to immediate practical service and with all her superstitious terrors at an end, old Priscilla took off a soaked little velvet hat and began to unfasten a wet mass of soft silk that clung round the fragile little figure.
"Go and bar the door fast, Mister Robin, my dear!" she said, looking up at the young man's pale, agonised face,—"We don't want any one comin' in here to see the child in trouble!—besides, the wind's enough to scare a body to death! Poor lamb, poor lamb!—where she can have come from the good Lord only knows! It's for all the world like the night when she was left here, long ago! Lock and bar the door, dearie, and get me some of that precious old wine out of the cupboard in the best parlour." Here her active fingers came upon the glittering diamond pendant in the shape of a dove that hung by its slender gold chain round Innocent's neck. She unclasped it, looking at it wonderingly—then she handed it to Robin who regarded it with sombre, grudging eyes. Was it a love-gift?—and from whom?
"And while you're about helping me," went on Priscilla—"you might go to the child's room and fetch me that old white woolly gown she used to wear—it's warm and soft, and we'll put it on her and wrap her in a blanket when she comes to herself. She'll be all right presently."
Like a man in a moving dream he obeyed, and while he went on his errands Priscilla managed to get off some of the dripping garments which clung to the girl's slight form as closely as the wrappings of a shroud. Chafing the small icy hands, she smoothed the drenched fair hair, loosening its pins and combs, and spreading it out to dry, murmuring fond words of motherly pity and tenderness while the tears trickled slowly down her furrowed cheeks.
"My poor baby!—my pretty child!" she murmured—"What has broken her like this?—The world's been too rough for her—I misdoubt me if her fancies about love an' the like o' that nonsense aren't in the mischief,—but praise the Lord that's brought her home again, an' if so be it pleases Him we'll keep her home!"
As she thought this, Innocent suddenly opened her eyes. Beautiful, wild eyes that stared at her wonderingly without recognition.
"Amadis!" The voice was thin and faint, but exquisitely tender. "Amadis! How kind you are! Ah, yes!—at last!—I was sure you did not mean to be cruel—I knew you would come back and be good to me again! My Amadis!—You ARE good!—you could not be anything else but good and true!" She laughed weakly and went on more rapidly—"It is raining—yes! Oh, yes—raining very much!—such a cold, sharp rain! I've walked quite a long way—but I felt I must come back to you, Amadis!—just to ask you once more to say a kind word-to kiss me…"
She closed her eyes again and her head fell back on the pillow of the chair in which she lay. Priscilla's heart sank.
"She doesn't know what she's talking about, poor lamb!" she thought,—"Just wandering and off her head!—and fancying things about that old French knight again!"
Here Robin entered, and stood a moment, lost in a maze of enchanted misery at the sight of the pitiful little half-disrobed figure in the chair, till Priscilla took the white garment he had been sent to fetch out of his passive hand.