The trend of her new circle had indeed carried her far. He was privately appalled by her. She was hysterically, passionately spiteful—almost to the point of malignance.
"Do you realise that this is a scene? It has not been our habit to indulge in scenes," he said.
"I shall speak about it as freely as I shall speak about Robin," she flaunted at him, wholly unrestrained. "Do you think I know nothing about Robin? I'm an affectionate mother and I've been making inquiries. She's not with the Dowager at Eaton Square. She got ill and was sent away to be hidden in the country. Girls are, sometimes. I thought she would be sent away somewhere, the day I met her in the street. She looked exactly like that sort of thing. Where is she? I demand to know."
There is nothing so dangerous to others as the mere spitefully malignant temper of an empty headed creature giving itself up to its own weak fury. It knows no restraint, no limit in its folly. In her fantastic broodings over her daughter's undue exaltation of position Feather had many times invented for her own entertainment little scenes in which she could score satisfactorily. Such scenes had always included Coombe, the Dowager, Robin and Mrs. Muir.
"I am her mother. She is not of age. I can demand to see her. I can make her come home and stay with me while I see her through her 'trouble,' as pious people call it. She's got herself into trouble—just like a housemaid. I knew she would—I warned her," and her laugh was actually shrill.
It was inevitable—and ghastly—that he should suddenly see Robin with her white eyelids dropped over her basket of sewing by the window in the Tower room at Darreuch. It rose as clear as a picture on a screen and he felt sick with actual terror.
"I'll go to the Duchess and ask her questions until she can't face me without telling the truth. If she's nasty I'll talk to the War Work people who crowd her house. They all saw Robin and the wide-awake ones will understand when I'm maternal and tragic and insist on knowing. I'll go to Mrs. Muir and talk to her. It will be fun to see her face and the Duchess'."
He had never suspected her of malice such as this. And even in the midst of his ghastly dismay he saw that it was merely the malice of an angrily spiteful selfish child of bad training and with no heart. There was nothing to appeal to—nothing to arrest and control. She might repent her insanity in a few days but for the period of her mood she would do her senseless worst.
"Your daughter has not done what you profess to believe," he said. "You do not believe it. Will you tell me why you propose to do these things?"