She was not distracted by the society of young people of her own age. She, indeed, showed a definite desire to avoid such companionship. What she said to Mademoiselle Vallé one afternoon during a long walk they took together, held its own revelation for the older woman.
They had come upon the two Erwyns walking with their attendant in Kensington Gardens, and, seeing them at some distance, Robin asked her companion to turn into another walk.
“I don’t want to meet them,” she said, hurriedly. “I don’t think I like girls. Perhaps it’s horrid of me—but I don’t. I don’t like those two.” A few minutes later, after they had walked in an opposite direction, she said thoughtfully.
“Perhaps the kind of girls I should like to know would not like to know me.”
From the earliest days of her knowledge of Lord Coombe, Mademoiselle Vallé had seen that she had no cause to fear lack of comprehension on his part. With a perfection of method, they searched each other’s intelligence. It had become understood that on such occasions as there was anything she wished to communicate or inquire concerning, Mr. Benby, in his private room, was at Mademoiselle’s service, and there his lordship could also be met personally by appointment.
“There have been no explanations,” Mademoiselle Vallé said to Dowson. “He does not ask to know why I turn to him and I do not ask to know why he cares about this particular child. It is taken for granted that is his affair and not mine. I am paid well to take care of Robin, and he knows that all I say and do is part of my taking care of her.”
After the visit of the Erwyn children, she had a brief interview with Coombe, in which she made for him a clear sketch. It was a sketch of unpleasant little minds, avid and curious on somewhat exotic subjects, little minds, awake to rather common claptrap and gossipy pinchbeck interests.
“Yes—unpleasant, luckless, little persons. I quite understand. They never appeared before. They will not appear again. Thank you, Mademoiselle,” he said.
The little girls did not appear again; neither did any others of their type, and the fact that Feather knew little of other types was a sufficient reason for Robin’s growing up without companions of her own age.
“She’s a lonely child, after all,” Mademoiselle said.