"Isn't 'miserably' rather too much--living as you are at an expensive
hotel?"

Well, she promptly met this. "They take us en pension, for ever so
little a day. I've been knocking about Europe long enough to learn all
sorts of horrid arts. Besides, don't speak of hotels; we've spent half
our life in them and Linda told me only last night that she hoped never
to put her foot into one again. She feels that when she comes to such a
place as this she ought, if things were decently right, to find a villa
of her own."

"Then her companion there's perfectly competent to give her one. Don't
think I've the least desire to push them into each other's arms--I only
ask to wash my hands of them. But I should like to know why you want, as
you said just now, to save him. When you speak as if your daughter were
a monster I take it you're not serious."

She was facing me in the rich short twilight, and to describe herself as
immeasurably more serious perhaps than she had ever been in her life she
had only to look at me without protestation. "It's Linda's standard. God
knows I myself could get on! She's ambitious, luxurious, determined to
have what she wants--more 'on the make' than any one I've ever seen. Of
course it's open to you to tell me it's my own fault, that I was so
before her and have made her so. But does that make me like it any
better?"

"Dear Mrs. Pallant, you're wonderful, you're terrible," I could only
stammer, lost in the desert of my thoughts.

"Oh yes, you've made up your mind about me; you see me in a certain way