Coombe with his unmoving face, his perfection of exact phrase and his cold almost inhuman eye! After all the matter concerned him closely.
"While Houses threaten to crumble and Heads may fall into the basket there are things we must remember until we disappear," he had said not long ago with this same grey eye fixed on him.

"I have no son.

If Marquisates continue to exist you will be the Head of the House of Coombe." What would _he_ make of a dream if he handled it?
What would there be left?
Donal's heart burned in his side when he recalled Feather's impudent little laugh as she had talked of her "vagabond Robin," her "small pariah." He was a boy entranced and exalted by his first passion and because he was a sort of young superman it was not a common one, though it shared all the unreason and impetuous simplicities of the most rudimentary of its kind.

He could not think very calmly or logically; both the heaven and the earth in him swept him along as with the rush of the spheres.

It was Robin who was foremost in all his thoughts.