She turned her eyes away quickly with a nervous shudder. She had a horror of the nearness of Rob’s room. If there had been another part of the house in which she could have slept she would have fled to it as soon as he was taken ill. But the house was too small to have “parts”. The tiny drawing-rooms piled themselves on top of the dining-room, the “master’s bedrooms” on top of the drawing-rooms, and the nurseries and attics where Robin and the servants slept one on the other at the top of the house. So she had been obliged to stay and endure everything. Rob’s cramped quarters had always been full of smart boots and the smell of cigars and men’s clothes. He had moved about a good deal and had whistled and laughed and sworn and grumbled. They had neither of them had bad tempers so that they had not quarrelled with each other. They had talked through the open door when they were dressing and they had invented clever tricks which helped them to get out of money scrapes and they had gossiped and made fun of people. And now the door was locked and the room was a sort of horror. She could never think of it without seeing the stiff hard figure on the bed, the straight close line of the mouth and the white hard nose sharpened and narrowed as Rob’s had never been. Somehow she particularly could not bear the recollection of the sharp unnatural modeling of the hard, white nose. She could not _bear_ it! She found herself recalling it the moment she saw the light on the door handle and she got up to move about and try to forget it. It was then that she went to the window and looked down into the street, probably attracted by some slight noise though she was not exactly aware that she had heard anything. She must have heard something however. Two four-wheeled cabs were standing at the front door and the cabman assisted by Edward were putting trunks on top of them. They were servants’ trunks and Cook was already inside the first cab which was filled with paper parcels and odds and ends. Even as her mistress watched Emma got in carrying a sedate band-box. She was the house-parlourmaid and a sedate person. The first cab drove away as soon as its door was closed and the cabman mounted to his seat. Louisa looking wholly unprofessional without her nurse’s cap and apron and wearing a tailor-made navy blue costume and a hat with a wing in it, entered the second cab followed by Edward intensely suggesting private life and possible connection with a Bank. The second cab followed the first and Feather having lost her breath looked after them as they turned the corner of the street. When they were quite out of sight she turned back into the room. The colour had left her skin, and her eyes were so wide stretched and her face so drawn and pinched with abject terror that her prettiness itself had left her.