piteful--almost to
the point of malignance.

"Do you realise that this is a scene? It has not been our habit to
indulge in scenes," he said.

"I shall speak about it as freely as I shall speak about Robin," she
flaunted at him, wholly unrestrained. "Do you think I know nothing about
Robin? I'm an affectionate mother and I've been making inquiries. She's
not with the Dowager at Eaton Square. She got ill and was sent away to
be hidden in the country. Girls are, sometimes. I thought she would be
sent away somewhere, the day I met her in the street. She looked
exactly like that sort of thing. Where is she? I demand to know."

There is nothing so dangerous to others as the mere spitefully malignant
temper of an empty headed creature giving itself up to its own weak
fury. It knows no restraint, no limit in its folly. In her fantastic
broodings over her daughter's undue exaltation of position Feather had
many times invented for her own entertainment little scenes in which she
could score satisfactorily. Such scenes had always included Coombe, the
Dowager, Robin and Mrs. Muir.

"I am her mother. She is not of age. I _can_ demand to see her. I can
make her come home and stay with me while I see her through her
'trouble,' as pious people call it. She's got herself into trouble--just
like a housemaid. I knew she would--I warned her," and her laugh was
actually shrill.

It was inevitable--and ghastly--that he should suddenly see Robin with
her white eyelids dropped over her basket of sewing by the window in the
Tower room at Darreuch. It rose as clear as a picture on a screen and he
felt sick with actual terror.

"I'll go to the Duchess and ask her questions until she can't face me
without telling the truth. If she's nasty I'll talk to the War Work
people who crowd her house. They all saw Robin and the wide-awake ones
will understand when I'm maternal and tragic and insist on knowing. I'll
go to Mrs. Muir and talk to her. It will be fun to see her face and the
Duchess'."

He had never suspected her of malice such as this. And even in the midst
of his ghastly dismay he saw that it was merely the malice of an angrily
spiteful selfish child of bad training and with no heart. There was
nothing to appeal to--nothing to arrest and control. She might repent
her insanity in a few days but for the period of her mood she would do
her senseless worst.

"Your daughter has not done what you profess to believe," he said. "You
do not b