“Dear little mite!” exclaimed the surprised Dowson. “Dear me!” And there was actual moisture in her eyes as she squeezed the small body in her arms. “She’s the strangest mite I ever nursed,” was her comment to Mrs. Blayne below stairs. “It was so sudden, and she did it as if she’d never done it before. I’d actually been thinking she hadn’t any feeling at all.” “No reason why she should have. She’s been taken care of by the clock and dressed like a puppet, but she’s not been treated human!” broke forth Mrs. Blayne. Then the whole story was told—the “upstairs” story with much vivid description, and the mentioning of many names and the dotting of many “i’s”. Dowson had heard certain things only through vague rumour, but now she knew and began to see her way. She had not heard names before, and the definite inclusion of Lord Coombe’s suggested something to her. “Do you think the child could be _jealous_ of his lordship?” she suggested. “She might if she knew anything about him—but she never saw him until the night she was taken down into the drawing-room. She’s lived upstairs like a little dog in its kennel.” “Well,” Dowson reflected aloud, “it sounds almost silly to talk of a child’s hating any one, but that bit of a thing’s eyes had fair hate in them when she looked up at him where he stood. That was what puzzled me.” CHAPTER XV Before Robin had been taken to the seaside to be helped by the bracing air of the Norfolk coast to recover her lost appetite and forget her small tragedy, she had observed that unaccustomed things were taking place in the house. Workmen came in and out through the mews at the back and brought ladders with them and tools in queer bags. She heard hammerings which began very early in the morning and went on all day. As Andrews had trained her not to ask tiresome questions, she only crept now and then to a back window and peeped out. But in a few days Dowson took her away. When she came back to London, she was not taken up the steep dark stairs to the third floor. Dowson led her into some rooms she had never seen before. They were light and airy and had pretty walls and furniture. A sitting-room on the ground floor had even a round window with plants in it and a canary bird singing in a cage. “May we stay here?” she asked Dowson in a whisper. “We are going to live here,” was the answer. And so they did. At first Feather occasionally took her intimates to see the additional apartments. “In perfect splendour is the creature put up, and I with a bedroom like a coalhole and such drawing-rooms as you see each time you enter the house!” she broke forth spitefully one day when she forgot herself.