So light
and airy was the fair, slim, physical presentation of her being
to the earthly vision, and so almost impalpably diaphanous the
texture and form of mind and character to be observed by human
perception, that among such friends--and enemies--as so slight a
thing could claim she was prettily known as "Feather". Her real
name, "Amabel", was not half as charming and whimsical in its
appropriateness. "Feather" she adored being called and as it was
the fashion among the amazing if amusing circle in which she spent
her life, to call its acquaintances fantastic pet names selected
from among the world of birds, beasts and fishes or inanimate
objects--"Feather" she floated through her curious existence. And
it so happened that she was the mother of the child who so often
stared out of the window of the dingy and comfortless Day Nursery,
too much a child to be more than vaguely conscious in a chaotic way
that a certain feeling which at times raged within her and made her
little body hot and restless was founded on something like actual
hate for a special man who had certainly taken no deliberate steps
to cause her detestation.
* * * * *
"Feather" had not been called by that delicious name when she married
Robert Gareth-Lawless who was a beautiful and irresponsibly rather
than deliberately bad young man. She was known as Amabel Darrel
and the loveliest girl in the lovely corner of the island of Jersey
where her father, a country doctor, had begotten a large family of
lovely creatures and brought them up on the appallingly inadequate
proceeds of his totally inadequate practice.
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