I wonder what his mother would
do now if he turned up at your mistress' house--that's what she
is, you know, your mistress--and began to make love to you." She
laughed outright. "You'll get into all sorts of messes, but that
would be the nicest one!"
Robin could only stand and gaze at her. Her moment's fire had died
down. Without warning, out of the past a wave rose and overwhelmed
her then and there. It bore with it the wild woe of the morning
when a child had waited in the spring sun and her world had fallen
into nothingness. It came back--the broken-hearted anguish, the
utter helpless desolation, as if she stood in the midst of it
again, as if it had never passed. It was a re-incarnation. She
could not bear it.
"Do you hate me--as I hate Lord Coombe?" she cried out. "Do you WANT
unhappy things to happen to me? Oh! Mother, why!" She had never
said "Mother" before. Nature said it for her here. The piteous
appeal of her youth and lonely young rush of tears was almost
intolerably sweet. Through some subtle cause it added to the thing
in her which Feather resented and longed to trouble and to hurt.
"You are a spiteful little cat!" she sprang up to exclaim, standing
close and face to face with her. "You think I am an old thing
and that I'm jealous of you! Because you're pretty and a girl you
think women past thirty don't count. You'll find out.
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