gravity. Jack himself had a general idea that serious friendships between
man and woman were adapted only to the young and the unmated. After
marriage, according to this conception, the sexes became, even in social
intercourse, monogamous, and he couldn't feel the bond between Mrs. Upton
and a feudal country squire as a matter of much importance. But, on the
other hand, Mrs. Upton had said "friend" with decision, and though the
word, for her, could not mean what it meant to people like himself and
Imogen--a grave, a beautiful bond of mutual help, mutual endeavor, mutual
rejoicing in the wonder and splendor of life--even a trivial relationship
was not a fit subject for playful patronage. It was with sharp
disapprobation that he heard Imogen go on to say, "I should like to meet a
man like that--really to know. One imagines that they are as extinct as the
dodo, and suddenly, if one goes to England, one finds them swarming. Happy,
decorative, empty people; perfectly kind, perfectly contented, perfectly
useless. Oh, I don't mean your Sir Basil a bit, mama darling. I'm quite
sure, since you like him, that he is a more interesting variation of the
type. Only I can't help wondering what he _does_ find to write about."

"I think, as I am wondering myself, I will ask you all to excuse me if
I open my letter," said Mrs. Upton, and, making no offer of satisfying
Imogen's curiosity, she unfolded two stout sheets of paper and proceeded
to read them.

Imogen did not lose her look of lightness, but Jack fancied in the
steadiness of the gaze that she bent upon her mother a controlled anger.

"One may be useful, Imogen, without wearing any badge of usefulness," Mrs.
Wake now observed. Her bonnet, as usual, on one side, and her hair much
disarranged, she had listened to the colloquy in silence.