Coombe would have recognized the little cat look, if he had been watching her as she leaned back in her chair and scrutinized her daughter. The fact was that she took in her every point, being an astute censor of other women’s charms. “Stand up,” she said. Robin stood up because she could not well refuse to do so, but she coloured because she was suddenly ashamed. “You’re not little, but you’re not tall,” her mother said. “That’s against you. It’s the fashion for women to be immensely tall now. Du Maurier’s pictures in Punch and his idiotic Trilby did it. Clothes are made for giantesses. I don’t care about it myself, but a girl’s rather out of it if she’s much less than six feet high. You can sit down.” A more singular interview between mother and daughter had assuredly rarely taken place. As she looked at the girl her resentment of her increased each moment. She actually felt as if she were beginning to lose her temper. “You are what pious people call ‘going out into the world’,” she went on. “In moral books mothers always give advice and warnings to their girls when they’re leaving them. I can give you some warnings. You think that because you have been taken up by a dowager duchess everything will be plain sailing. You’re mistaken. You think because you are eighteen and pretty, men will fall at your feet.” “I would rather be hideous,” cried suddenly passionate Robin. “I _hate_ men!” The silly pretty thing who was responsible for her being, grew sillier as her irritation increased. “That’s what girls always pretend, but the youngest little idiot knows it isn’t true. It’s men who count. It makes me laugh when I think of them—and of you. You know nothing about them and they know everything about you. A clever man can do anything he pleases with a silly girl.” “Are they _all_ bad?” Robin exclaimed furiously. “They’re none of them bad. They’re only men. And that’s my warning. Don’t imagine that when they make love to you they do it as if you were the old Duchess’ granddaughter. You will only be her paid companion and that’s a different matter.” “I will not speak to one of them——” Robin actually began. “You’ll be obliged to do what the Duchess tells you to do,” laughed Feather, as she realized her obvious power to dull the glitter and glow of things which she had felt the girl must be dazzled and uplifted unduly by. She was rather like a spiteful schoolgirl entertaining herself by spoiling an envied holiday for a companion. “Old men will run after you and you will have to be nice to them whether you like it or not.” A queer light came into her eyes. “Lord Coombe is fond of girls just out of the schoolroom. But if he begins to make love to you don’t allow yourself to feel too much flattered.” Robin sprang toward her. “Do you think I don’t _abhor_ Lord Coombe!” she cried out forgetting herself in the desperate cruelty of the moment. “Haven’t I reason——” but there she remembered and stopped.