Now was the time! Robin went to her and took hold of a very small piece of her sparkling dress.
“Are you my Mother?” she said. And then everybody burst into a peal of laughter, Feather with the rest.
“She calls me the Lady Downstairs,” she said. “I really believe she doesn’t know. She’s rather a stupid little thing.”
“Amazing lack of filial affection,” said Lord Coombe.
He was not laughing like the rest and he was looking down at Robin. She thought him ugly and wicked looking. Vesey and Harrowby were beautiful by contrast. Before she knew who he was, she disliked him. She looked at him askance under her eyelashes, and he saw her do it before her mother spoke his name, taking her by the tips of her fingers and leading her to him.
“Come and let Lord Coombe look at you,” she said. So it revealed itself to her that it was he—this ugly one—who had done it, and hatred surged up in her soul. It was actually in the eyes she raised to his face, and Coombe saw it as he had seen the sidelong glance and he wondered what it meant.
“Shake hands with Lord Coombe,” Feather instructed.
“If you can make a curtsey, make one.” She turned her head over her shoulders, “Have you taught her to curtsey, Andrews?”
But Andrews had not and secretly lost temper at finding herself made to figure as a nurse who had been capable of omission. Outwardly she preserved rigid calm.
“I’m afraid not, ma’am. I will at once, if you wish it.”