Then Robin was born. She was an intruder and a calamity of course. Nobody had contemplated her for a moment. Feather cried for a week when she first announced the probability of her advent. Afterwards however she managed to forget the approaching annoyance and went to parties and danced to the last hour continuing to be a great success because her prettiness was delicious and her diaphanous mentality was no strain upon the minds of her admirers male and female. That a Feather should become a parent gave rise to much wit of light weight when Robin in the form of a bundle of lace was carried down by her nurse to be exhibited in the gaudy crowded little drawing-room in the slice of a house in the Mayfair street. It was the Head of the House of Coombe who asked the first question about her. “What will you _do_ with her?” he inquired detachedly. The frequently referred to “babe unborn” could not have presented a gaze of purer innocence than did the lovely Feather. Her eyes of larkspur blueness were clear of any thought or intention as spring water is clear at its unclouded best. Her ripple of a laugh was clear also—enchantingly clear. “Do!” she repeated. “What is it people ‘do’ with babies? I suppose the nurse knows. I don’t. I wouldn’t touch her for the world. She frightens me.” She floated a trifle nearer and bent to look at her. “I shall call her Robin,” she said. “Her name is really Roberta as she couldn’t be called Robert. People will turn round to look at a girl when they hear her called Robin. Besides she has eyes like a robin. I wish she’d open them and let you see.” By chance she did open them at the moment—quite slowly. They were dark liquid brown and seemed to be all lustrous iris which gazed unmovingly at the object in line of focus. That object was the Head of the House of Coombe. “She is staring at me. There is antipathy in her gaze,” he said, and stared back unmovingly also, but with a sort of cold interest. CHAPTER II The Head of the House of Coombe was not a title to be found in Burke or Debrett. It was a fine irony of the Head’s own and having been accepted by his acquaintances was not infrequently used by them in their light moments in the same spirit. The peerage recorded him as a Marquis and added several lesser attendant titles.