receive Mrs. Tramore again on any terms, and when she was spoken of,
which now was not often, it was inveterately said of her that she
went nowhere. Apparently she had not the qualities for which London
compounds; though in the cases in which it does compound you may
often wonder what these qualities are. She had not at any rate been
successful: her lover was dead, her husband was liked and her
children were pitied, for in payment for a topic London will
parenthetically pity. It was thought interesting and magnanimous
that Charles Tramore had not married again. The disadvantage to his
children of the miserable story was thus left uncorrected, and this,
rather oddly, was counted as HIS sacrifice. His mother, whose
arrangements were elaborate, looked after them a great deal, and they
enjoyed a mixture of laxity and discipline under the roof of their
aunt, Miss Tramore, who was independent, having, for reasons that the
two ladies had exhaustively discussed, determined to lead her own
life. She had set up a home at St. Leonard's, and that contracted
shore had played a considerable part in the upbringing of the little
Tramores. They knew about their mother, as the phrase was, but they
didn't know her; which was naturally deemed more pathetic for them
than for her. She had a house in Chester Square and an income and a
victoria--it served all purposes, as she never went out in the
evening--and flowers on her window-sills, and a remarkable appearance
of youth. The income was supposed to be in part the result of a
bequest from the man for whose sake she had committed the error of
her life, and in the appearance of youth there was a slightly
impertinent implication that it was a sort of afterglow of the same
connection.

Her children, as they grew older, fortunately showed signs of some
individuality of disposition. Edith, the second girl, clung to her