"Oh, but you always do! No one is like you," said Miss Easter, in all good faith. "I don't believe I've ever heard you say an unkind word of anybody."
Lady Rossiter smiled.
"The great thing," she observed gently, "is never to say anything, unless one can say something kind. And it is very strange, Iris dear, how one can nearly always find something that is nice and yet true, to say of everyone."
"You can, I'm sure."
Iris was always complaisant, besides being young and happy and therefore disposed to be uncritical, and she had long entertained a simple and quite unreasoning admiration for Lady Rossiter.
Her enthusiasm for Miss Marchrose was a recent impulse only, and did not prevent her from a further endeavour to obtain light upon Lady Rossiter's views.
"She's quite too nice to me, always, and I do think she must have been pretty. In fact, she is now, in a sort of way."
"Quite," agreed Lady Rossiter serenely.
"Sometimes I wonder if she has foreign blood in her."
"Why?"