humanitarian rather than human: she feels strongly about social
questions and principles, not about persons. Only, one observes that
this reasonableness and intense personal privacy, which leaves her
relations with Gloria and Phil much as they might be between her and the
children of any other woman, breaks down in the case of Dolly. Though
almost every word she addresses to her is necessarily in the nature of a
remonstrance for some breach of decorum, the tenderness in her voice is
unmistakable; and it is not surprising that years of such remonstrance
have left Dolly hopelessly spoiled.

Gloria, who is hardly past twenty, is a much more formidable person
than her mother. She is the incarnation of haughty highmindedness,
raging with the impatience of an impetuous, dominative character
paralyzed by the impotence of her youth, and unwillingly disciplined by
the constant danger of ridicule from her lighter-handed juniors. Unlike
her mother, she is all passion; and the conflict of her passion with her
obstinate pride and intense fastidiousness results in a freezing
coldness of manner. In an ugly woman all this would be repulsive; but
Gloria is an attractive woman. Her deep chestnut hair, olive brown
skin, long eyelashes, shaded grey eyes that often flash like stars,
delicately turned full lips, and compact and supple, but muscularly
plump figure appeal with disdainful frankness to the senses and
imagination. A very dangerous girl, one would say, if the moral
passions were not also marked, and even nobly marked, in a fine brow.
Her tailor-made skirt-and-jacket dress of saffron brown cloth, seems
conventional when her back is turned; but it displays in front a blouse
of sea-green silk which upsets its conventionality with one stroke, and
sets her apart as effectually as the twins from the ordinary run of
fashionable seaside humanity.