Lights were most unconsciously
thrown by Mrs. Gareth-Lawless herself. Her quite amiable detachment
from all shadow of responsibility, her brilliantly unending
occupations, her goings in and out, the flocks of light, almost
noisy, intimates who came in and out with her revealed much to a
respectable person who had soberly watched the world.
"The Lady Downstairs is my mother, isn't she?" Robin inquired
gravely once.
"Yes, my dear," was Dowson's answer.
A pause for consideration of the matter and then from Robin:
"All mothers are not alike, Dowson, are they?"
"No, my dear," with wisdom.
Though she was not yet seven, life had so changed for her that it
was a far cry back to the Spring days in the Square Gardens. She
went back, however, back into that remote ecstatic past.
"The Lady Downstairs is not--alike," she said at last, "Donal's
mother loved him. She let him sit in the same chair with her and
read in picture books. She kissed him when he was in bed."
Jennings, the young footman who was a humourist, had, of course,
heard witty references to Robin's love affair while in attendance,
and he had equally, of course, repeated them below stairs. Therefore,
Dowson had heard vague rumours but had tactfully refrained from
mentioning the subject to her charge.
"Who was Donal?" she said now, but quite quietly. Robin did not
know that a confidante would have made her first agony easier to
bear.
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