Robin laughed just a little.
“You have not seen him do it. I have not seen him do it myself very often. He comes to call on—Mamma”—she never said “Mother”—“when he is in London. He has been coming for two or three seasons. The first time I saw him I was going out with Dowie and he was just going upstairs. Because the hall is so small, we almost knocked against each other, and he jumped back and made his bow, and he stared so that I felt silly and half frightened. I was only fifteen then.”
“And since then?” Mademoiselle Vallé inquired.
“When he is here it seems as if I always meet him somewhere. Twice, when Fräulein Hirsch was with me in the Square Gardens, he came and spoke to us. I think he must know her. He was very grand and condescendingly polite to her, as if he did not forget she was only a German teacher and I was only a little girl whose mamma he knew. But he kept looking at me until I began to hate him.”
“You must not dislike people without reason. You dislike Lord Coombe.”
“They both make me creep. Lord Coombe doesn’t plunge his eyes into mine, but he makes me creep with his fishy coldness. I feel as if he were like Satan in his still way.”
“That is childish prejudice and nonsense.”
“Perhaps the other is, too,” said Robin. “But they both make me creep, nevertheless. I would rather die than be obliged to let one of them touch me. That was why I would never shake hands with Lord Coombe when I was a little child.”
“You think Fräulein Hirsch knows the Baron?” Mademoiselle inquired further.
“I am sure she does. Several times, when she has gone out to walk with me, we have met him. Sometimes he only passes us and salutes, but sometimes he stops and says a few words in a stiff, magnificent way. But he always bores his eyes into mine, as if he were finding out things about me which I don’t know myself. He has passed several times when you have been with me, but you may not remember.”