“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. Mrs. Muir will count and she’s forty if she’s a day. Her son’s such a beauty that people go mad over him. And he worships her—and he’s her slave. I wish you would get into some mess you couldn’t get out of! Don’t come to me if you do.”
The wide beauty of Robin’s gaze and her tear wet bloom were too much. Feather was quite close to her. The spiteful schoolgirl impulse got the better of her.
“Don’t make eyes at me like that,” she cried, and she actually gave the rose cheek nearest her a sounding little slap, “There!” she exclaimed hysterically and she turned about and ran out of the room crying herself.
Robin had parted from Mademoiselle Vallé at Charing Cross Station on the afternoon of the same day, but the night before they had sat up late together and talked a long time. In effect Mademoiselle had said also, “You are going out into the world,” but she had not approached the matter in Mrs. Gareth-Lawless’ mood. One may have charge of a girl and be her daily companion for years, but there are certain things the very years themselves make it increasingly difficult to say to her. And after all why should one state difficult things in exact phrases unless one lacks breeding and is curious. Anxious she had been at times, but not curious. So it was that even on this night of their parting it was not she who spoke.
It was after a few minutes of sitting in silence and looking at the fire that Robin broke in upon the quiet which had seemed to hold them both.
“I must learn to remember always that I am a sort of servant. I must be very careful. It will be easier for me to realize that I am not in my own house than it would be for other girls. I have not allowed Dowie to dress me for a good many weeks. I have learned how to do everything for myself quite well.”
“But Dowie will be in the house with you and the Duchess is very kind.”
“Every night I have begun my prayers by thanking God for leaving me Dowie,” the girl said. “I have begun them and ended them with the same words.” She looked about her and then broke out as if involuntarily. “I shall be away from here. I shall not wear anything or eat anything or sleep on any bed I have not paid for myself.”
“These rooms are very pretty. We have been very comfortable here,” Mademoiselle said. Suddenly she felt that if she waited a few moments she would know definitely things she had previously only guessed at. “Have you no little regrets?”