“Robin is a stimulating name,” put in Harrowby. “Is it too late to let us see her? If she’s such a beauty as Starling hints, she ought to be looked at.”
Feather actually touched the bell by the fireplace. A sudden caprice moved her. The love story had not gone off quite as well as she had thought it would. And, after all, the child was pretty enough to show off. She knew nothing in particular about her daughter’s hours, but, if she was asleep, she could be wakened.
“Tell Andrews,” she said to the footman when he appeared, “I wish Miss Robin to be brought downstairs.”
“They usually go to bed at seven, I believe,” remarked Coombe, “but, of course, I am not an authority.”
Robin was not asleep though she had long been in bed. Because she kept her eyes shut Andrews had been deceived into carrying on a conversation with her sister Anne, who had come to see her. Robin had been lying listening to it. She had begun to listen because they had been talking about the day she had spoiled her rose-coloured smock and they had ended by being very frank about other things.
“As sure as you saw her speak to the boy’s mother the day before, just so sure she whisked him back to Scotland the next morning,” said Andrews. “She’s one of the kind that’s particular. Lord Coombe’s the reason. She does not want her boy to see or speak to him, if it can be helped. She won’t have it—and when she found out—”
“Is Lord Coombe as bad as they say?” put in Anne with bated breath. “He must be pretty bad if a boy that’s eight years old has to be kept out of sight and sound of him.”
So it was Lord Coombe who had somehow done it. He had made Donal’s mother take him away. It was Lord Coombe. Who was Lord Coombe? It was because he was wicked that Donal’s mother would not let him play with her—because he was wicked. All at once there came to her a memory of having heard his name before. She had heard it several times in the basement Servants’ Hall and, though she had not understood what was said about him, she had felt the atmosphere of cynical disapproval of something. They had said “him” and “her” as if he somehow belonged to the house. On one occasion he had been “high” in the manner of some reproof to Jennings, who, being enraged, freely expressed his opinions of his lordship’s character and general reputation. The impression made on Robin then had been that he was a person to be condemned severely. That the condemnation was the mere outcome of the temper of an impudent young footman had not conveyed itself to her, and it was the impression which came back to her now with a new significance. He was the cause—not Donal, not Donal’s Mother—but this man who was so bad that servants were angry because he was somehow connected with the house.
“As to his badness,” she heard Andrews answer, “there’s some that can’t say enough against him. Badness is smart these days. He’s bad enough for the boy’s mother to take him away from. It’s what he is in this house that does it. She won’t have her boy playing with a child like Robin.”
Then—even as there flashed upon her bewilderment this strange revelation of her own unfitness for association with boys whose mothers took care of them—Jennings, the young footman, came to the door.