There was only the first floor flight of stairs now. Robin could scarcely see her way. But Lord Coombe held her up firmly and, in a few moments more, the leering footman, grown pale, opened the large door, they crossed the pavement to the carriage, and she was helped in and fell, almost insensible, across Mademoiselle Vallé’s lap, and was caught in a strong arm which shook as she did. “_Ma chèrie_,” she heard, “The Good God! Oh, the good—good God!—And Lord Coombe! Lord Coombe!” Coombe had gone back to the house. Four men returned with him, two in plain clothes and two heavily-built policemen. They remained below, but Coombe went up the staircase with the swift lightness of a man of thirty. He merely stood upon the threshold of the drawing-room. This was what he said, and his face was entirely white and his eyes appalling. “My coming back to speak to you is—superfluous—and the result of pure fury. I allow it to myself as mere shameless indulgence. More is known against you than this—things which have gone farther and fared worse. You are not young and you are facing years of life in prison. Your head will be shaved—your hands worn and blackened and your nails broken with the picking of oakum. You will writhe in hopeless degradation until you are done for. You will have time, in the night blackness if of your cell, to remember—to see faces—to hear cries. Women such as you should learn what hell on earth means. You will learn.” When he ended, the woman hung with her back to the wall she had staggered against, her mouth opening and shutting helplessly but letting forth no sound. He took out an exquisitely fresh handkerchief and touched his forehead because it was damp. His eyes were still appalling, but his voice suddenly dropped and changed. “I have allowed myself to feel like a madman,” he said. “It has been a rich experience—good for such soul as I own.” He went downstairs and walked home because his carriage had taken Robin and Mademoiselle back to the slice of a house. CHAPTER XXIV Von Hillern made no further calls on Mrs. Gareth-Lawless. His return to Berlin was immediate and Fräulein Hirsch came no more to give lessons in German. Later, Coombe learned from the man with the steady, blunt-featured face, that she had crossed the Channel on a night boat not many hours after Von Hillern had walked away from Berford Place. The exact truth was that she had been miserably prowling about the adjacent streets, held in the neighbourhood by some self-torturing morbidness, half thwarted helpless passion, half triumphing hatred of the young thing she had betrayed. Up and down the streets she had gone, round and round, wringing her lean fingers together and tasting on her lips the salt of tears which rolled down her cheeks—tears of torment and rage.