Mrs. Farron looked down, and smoothed the delicate dark fur of her muff.
She hardly knew how to begin at the very beginning like this. She did not
want to hurt any one's feelings. How could she tell this childlike,
optimistic creature that to put Mathilde to living in surroundings like
these would be like exposing a naked baby on a mountaintop? It wasn't
love of luxury, at least not if luxury meant physical self-indulgence.
She could imagine suffering privations very happily in a Venetian palace
or on a tropical island. It was an esthetic, not a moral, problem; it was
a question of that profound and essential thing in the life of any woman
who was a woman--her charm. She wished to tell Mrs. Wayne that her son
wouldn't really like it, that he would hate to see Mathilde going out in
overshoes; that the background that she, Adelaide, had so expertly
provided for her child was part of the very attraction that made him want
to take her out of it. There was no use in saying that most poor mortals
were forced to get on without this magic atmosphere. They had never been
goddesses; they did not know what they were going without. But her child,
who had been, as it were, born a fairy, would miss tragically the
delicate beauty of her every-day life, would fade under the ugly monotony
of poverty.

But how could she say this to Mrs. Wayne, in her flat-heeled shoes and
simple, boyish shirt and that twelfth-century saint's profile, of which
so much might have been made by a clever woman?

At last she began, still smoothing her muff:

"Mrs. Wayne, I have brought up my daughter very simply. I don't at all
approve of the extravagances of these modern girls, with their own motors
and their own bills. Still, she has had a certain background. We must
admit that marriage with your son on his income alone would mean a