But Feather was not shocked or alarmed. Years of looking things in the face had provided her with a mental surface from which tilings rebounded. On the whole it even amused her and “suited her book” that Robin should take this tone. “Oh! I suppose you mean you know he admires me and pays bills for me. Where would you have been if he hadn’t done it? He’s been a sort of benefactor.” “I know nothing but that even when I was a little child I could not bear to touch his hand!” cried Robin. Then Feather remembered several things she had almost forgotten and she was still more entertained. “I believe you’ve not forgotten through all these years that the boy you fell so indecently in love with was taken away by his mother because Lord Coombe was _your_ mother’s admirer and he was such a sinner that even a baby was contaminated by him! Donal Muir is a young man by this time. I wonder what his mother would do now if he turned up at your mistress’ house—that’s what she is, you know, your mistress—and began to make love to you.” She laughed outright. “You’ll get into all sorts of messes, but that would be the nicest one!” Robin could only stand and gaze at her. Her moment’s fire had died down. Without warning, out of the past a wave rose and overwhelmed her then and there. It bore with it the wild woe of the morning when a child had waited in the spring sun and her world had fallen into nothingness. It came back—the broken-hearted anguish, the utter helpless desolation, as if she stood in the midst of it again, as if it had never passed. It was a re-incarnation. She could not bear it. “Do you hate me—as I hate Lord Coombe?” she cried out. “Do you _want_ unhappy things to happen to me? Oh! Mother, why!” She had never said “Mother” before. Nature said it for her here. The piteous appeal of her youth and lonely young rush of tears was almost intolerably sweet. Through some subtle cause it added to the thing in her which Feather resented and longed to trouble and to hurt. “You are a spiteful little cat!” she sprang up to exclaim, standing close and face to face with her. “You think I am an old thing and that I’m jealous of you! Because you’re pretty and a girl you think women past thirty don’t count. You’ll find out. Mrs. Muir will count and she’s forty if she’s a day. Her son’s such a beauty that people go mad over him. And he worships her—and he’s her slave. I wish you _would_ get into some mess you couldn’t get out of! Don’t come to me if you do.” The wide beauty of Robin’s gaze and her tear wet bloom were too much. Feather was quite close to her. The spiteful schoolgirl impulse got the better of her. “Don’t make eyes at me like that,” she cried, and she actually gave the rose cheek nearest her a sounding little slap, “There!” she exclaimed hysterically and she turned about and ran out of the room crying herself.