Chapter 7 - Page 2

leisure. You need not hesitate before saying anything you
liked in any one's drawing-room so long as it was amusing enough
to make somebody--if not everybody--laugh. Feather had made people
laugh in the same fashion in the past. The persons she most admired
were always making sly little impudent comments and suggestions,
and the thwarted years on the island of Jersey had, in her case,
resulted in an almost hectic desire to keep pace. Her efforts had
usually been successes because Nature's self had provided her with
the manner of a silly pretty child who did not know how far she
went. Shouts of laughter had often greeted her, and the first time
she had for a moment doubted her prowess was on an occasion when
she had caught a glimpse of Coombe who stared at her with an
expression which she would--just for one second--have felt might
be horror, if she had not been so sure it couldn't be, and must of
course be something else--one of the things nobody ever understood
in him.

By the time the softly swathing veils of vaporous darkness were
withdrawn, and the tight rope assuring everyone of its permanent
security became a trusted support, Feather at her crowded little
parties and at other people's bigger ones did not remain wholly
unaware of the probability that even people who rather liked
her made, among themselves, more or less witty comments upon her
improved fortunes. They were improved greatly. Bills were paid,
trades-people were polite, servants were respectful; she had no
need to invent excuses and lies. She and Robert had always kept out
of the way of stodgy, critical people, so they had been intimate
with none of the punctilious who might have withdrawn themselves
from a condition of things they chose to disapprove: accordingly,
she found no gaps in her circle. Those who had formed the habit of
amusing themselves at her house were as ready as before to amuse
themselves again.

The fact remained, however,--curiously, perhaps, in connection with
the usual slightness of all impressions made on her--that there
was a memory which never wholly left her. Even when she tried to
force it so far into the background of her existence that it might
almost be counted as forgotten, it had a trick of rising before
her. It was the memory of the empty house as its emptiness had
struck to the centre of her being when she had turned from her
bedroom window after watching the servants drive away in their
cabs. It was also the memory of the hours which had followed--the
night in which nobody had been in any of the rooms--no one had gone
up or down the stairs--when all had seemed dark and hollow--except
the Night Nursery where Robin screamed, and her own room where she
herself cowered under the bed