But although she felt it almost a religious duty to be smart, determined
as she was that the plutocracy should never, while she was alive, push the
aristocracy through, the wall and out of sight, she was a strict conformer
to the old tradition that had looked upon all arts to enhance and preserve
youth as the converse of respectable. Her once delicate pink and white skin
was wrinkled and weather-beaten, her nose had never known powder; but even
in the glare of the fire her skin looked cool and pale, for the heat had
not crimsoned her. Her blood was rather thin and she prided herself
upon the fact. She may have lost her early beauty, but she looked the
indubitable aristocrat, the lady born, as her more naive grandmothers would
have phrased it.

It sufficed.



III


By those that did not have the privilege of her intimate acquaintance she
was called "stuck-up," "a snob," a mid-victorian who ought to dress like
her more consistent mother, "rather a fool, if the truth were known, no
doubt."

In reality she was a tender-hearted and anxious mother, daughter, and
sister, and an impeccable wife, if a somewhat monotonous one. At all events
her husband never found fault with her in public or private. He had his
reasons. To the friends of her youth and to all members of her own old
set, she was intensely loyal; and although she had a cold contempt for the
institution of divorce, if one of that select band strayed into it, no