She said it to the Starling and Harrowby, who had been simply gazing about them in fevered mystification, because the new development was a thing which must invoke some more or less interesting explanation. At her outbreak, all they could do was to gaze at her with impartial eyes, which suggested question, and Feather shrugged pettish shoulders. “You knew _I_ didn’t do it. How could I?” she said. “It is a queer whim of Coombe’s. Of course, it is not the least like him. I call it morbid.” After which people knew about the matter and found it a subject for edifying and quite stimulating discussion. There was something fantastic in the situation. Coombe was the last man on earth to have taken the slightest notice of the child’s existence! It was believed that he had never seen her—except in long clothes—until she had glared at him and put her hand behind her back the night she was brought into the drawing-room. She had been adroitly kept tucked away in an attic somewhere. And now behold an addition of several wonderful, small rooms built, furnished and decorated for her alone, where she was to live as in a miniature palace attended by servitors! Coombe, as a purveyor of nursery appurtenances, was regarded with humour, the general opinion being that the eruption of a volcano beneath his feet alone could have awakened his somewhat chill self-absorption to the recognition of any child’s existence. “To be exact we none of us really know anything in particular about his mental processes.” Harrowby pondered aloud. “He’s capable of any number of things we might not understand, if he condescended to tell us about them—which he would never attempt. He has a remote, brilliantly stored, cynical mind. He owns that he is of an inhuman selfishness. I haven’t a suggestion to make, but it sets one searching through the purlieus of one’s mind for an approximately reasonable explanation.” “Why ‘purlieus’?” was the Starling’s inquiry. Harrowby shrugged his shoulders ever so lightly. “Well, one isn’t searching for reasons founded on copy-book axioms,” he shook his head. “Coombe? No.” There was a silence given to occult thought. “Feather is really in a rage and is too Feathery to be able to conceal it,” said Starling. “Feather would be—inevitably,” Harrowby lifted his near-sighted eyes to her curiously. “Can you see Feather in the future—when Robin is ten years older?” “I can,” the Starling answered.