with the character of the house itself which was a gaudy little
kennel crowded between two comparatively stately mansions. On one
side lived an inordinately rich South African millionaire, and
on the other an inordinately exalted person of title, which facts
combined to form sufficient grounds for a certain inordinateness
of rent.

Mrs. Gareth-Lawless was also, it may be stated, of the fibre
which must live on the right side of the street or dissolve into
nothingness--since as nearly nothingness as an embodied entity can
achieve had Nature seemingly created her at the outset. So light
and airy was the fair, slim, physical presentation of her being
to the earthly vision, and so almost impalpably diaphanous the
texture and form of mind and character to be observed by human
perception, that among such friends--and enemies--as so slight a
thing could claim she was prettily known as "Feather". Her real
name, "Amabel", was not half as charming and whimsical in its
appropriateness. "Feather" she adored being called and as it was
the fashion among the amazing if amusing circle in which she spent
her life, to call its acquaintances fantastic pet names selected
from among the world of birds, beasts and fishes or inanimate
objects--"Feather" she floated through her curious existence. And
it so happened that she was the mother of the child who so often
stared out of the window of the dingy and comfortless Day Nursery,
too much a child to be more than vaguely conscious in a chaotic way
that a certain feeling which at times raged within her and made her
little body hot and restless was founded on something like actual
hate for a special man who had certainly taken no deliberate steps
to cause her detestation.