“She is the kind of girl whose place in the universe is in the home of some young man whose own place in the universe is in the heart and soul and life of her kind of girl. They ought to carry out the will of God by falling passionately in love with each other. They ought to marry each other and have a large number of children as beautiful and rapturously happy as themselves. They would assist in the evolution of the race.”
“Oh! Mamma! how delightful you always are! For a really brilliant woman you are the most adorable dreamer in the world.”
“Dreams are the only things which are true. The rest are nothing but visions.”
“Angel!” her daughter laughed a little adoringly as she kissed her. “I will do whatever you want me to do. I always did, didn’t I? It’s your way of making one see what you see when you are talking that does it.”
It was understood before they parted that Kathryn and George would be present at the small dinner and the small dance, and that a few other agreeable young persons might be trusted to join them, and that Lady Lothwell and perhaps her husband would drop in.
“It’s your being almost Early Victorian, mamma, which makes it easy for you to initiate things. You will initiate little Miss Lawless. It was rather neat of her to prefer to drop the ‘Gareth.’ There has been less talk in late years of the different classes ‘keeping their places’—‘upper’ and ‘lower’ classes really strikes one as vulgar.”
“We may ‘keep our places’,” the Duchess said. “We may hold on to them as firmly as we please. It is the places themselves which are moving, my dear. It is not unlike the beginning of a landslide.”
Robin went to Dowie’s room the next evening and stood a moment in silence watching her sewing before she spoke. She looked anxious and even pale.
“Her grace is going to give a party to some young people, Dowie,” she said. “She wishes me to be present. I—I don’t know what to do.”