“No one can do more, and you appear to have done a great deal.”
“Do you know my secret?” she asked with an air of brightening confidence. And this treasure hung there a little temptingly before she revealed it. “To care only for the best! To do the best, to know the best—to have, to desire, to recognise, only the best. That’s what I’ve always done in my little quiet persistent way. I’ve gone through Europe on my devoted little errand, seeking, seeing, heeding, only the best. And it hasn’t been for myself alone—it has been for my daughter. My daughter has had the best. We’re not rich, but I can say that.”
“She has had you, madam,” I pronounced finely.
“Certainly, such as I am, I’ve been devoted. We’ve got something everywhere; a little here, a little there. That’s the real secret—to get something everywhere; you always can if you are devoted. Sometimes it has been a little music, sometimes a little deeper insight into the history of art; sometimes into that of literature, politics, economics: every little counts, you know. Sometimes it has been just a glimpse, a view, a lovely landscape, a mere impression. We’ve always been on the look-out. Sometimes it has been a valued friendship, a delightful social tie.”
“Here comes the ‘European society,’ the poor daughter’s bugbear,” I said to myself. “Certainly,” I remarked aloud—I admit rather hypocritically—“if you’ve lived a great deal in pensions you must have got acquainted with lots of people.”
Mrs. Church dropped her eyes an instant; taking it up, however, as one for whom discrimination was always at hand. “I think the European pension system in many respects remarkable and in some satisfactory. But of the friendships that we’ve formed few have been contracted in establishments of this stamp.”
“I’m sorry to hear that!” I ruefully laughed.
“I don’t say it for you, though I might say it for some others. We’ve been interested in European homes.”
“Ah there you’re beyond me!”
“Naturally”—she quietly assented. “We have the entrée of the old Genevese society. I like its tone. I prefer it to that of Mr. Ruck,” added Mrs. Church calmly; “to that of Mrs. Ruck and Miss Ruck. To that of Miss Ruck in particular.”