She felt much less helpless and when she was ready for bed she took a little more cognac. The flush had faded from her eye-lids and bloomed in delicious rose on her cheeks. As she crept between the cool sheets and nestled down on her pillow she had a delightful sense of increasing comfort—comfort. What a beautiful thing it was to go to sleep! And then she was disturbed—started out of the divine doze stealing upon her—by a shrill prolonged wailing shriek! It came from the Night Nursery and at the moment it seemed almost worse than anything which had occurred all through the day. It brought everything back so hideously. She had of course forgotten Robin again—and it was Robin! And Louisa had gone away with Edward. She had perhaps put the child to sleep discreetly before she went. And now she had wakened and was screaming. Feather had heard that she was a child with a temper but by fair means or foul Louisa had somehow managed to prevent her from being a nuisance. The shrieks shocked her into sitting upright in bed. Their shrillness tearing through the utter soundlessness of the empty house brought back all her terrors and set her heart beating at a gallop. “I—I _won’t!_” she protested, fairly with chattering teeth. “I won’t! I _won’t!_” She had never done anything for the child since its birth, she did not know how to do anything, she had not wanted to know. To reach her now she would be obliged to go out in the dark—the gas-jet she would have to light was actually close to the outer door of Robert’s bedroom—_the_ room! If she did not die of panic while she was trying to light it she would have to make her way almost in the dark up the steep crooked little staircase which led to the nurseries. And the awful little creature’s screams would be going on all the time making the blackness and dead silence of the house below more filled with horror by contrast—more shut off and at the same time more likely to waken to some horror which was new. “I-I couldn’t—even if I wanted to!” she quaked. “I daren’t! I daren’t! I wouldn’t do it—for _a million pounds?_” And she flung herself down again shuddering and burrowing her head under the coverings and pillows she dragged over her ears to shut out the sounds. The screams had taken on a more determined note and a fiercer shrillness which the still house heard well and made the most of, but they were so far deadened for Feather that she began beneath her soft barrier to protest pantingly. “I shouldn’t know what to do if I went. If no one goes near her she’ll cry herself to sleep. It’s—it’s only temper. Oh-h! what a horrible wail! It—it sounds like a—a lost soul!” But she did not stir from the bed. She burrowed deeper under the bed clothes and held the pillow closer to her ears.