“You do not know what it is,” she said, with a happy little sigh, to those among her friends who probably never would, “to stand the whole day long being pinned into linings by Madame Videpoche.”
And despite the sigh, she did it with an angelic sweetness of temper which quite touched the heart of Madame Videpoche, while making no difference in the bill.
Lady Cantourne would not have been human had she assumed the neutral in this important matter. She frankly enjoyed it all immensely.
“You know, Sir John,” she said in confidence to him one day at Hurlingham, “I have always dressed Millicent.”
“You need not tell me that,” he interrupted gracefully. “On ne peut s'y tromper.”
“And,” she went on almost apologetically, “whatever my own feelings on the subject may be, I cannot abandon her now. The world expects much from Millicent Chyne. I have taught it to do so. It will expect more from Millicent—Meredith.”
The old gentleman bowed in his formal way.
“And the world must not be disappointed,” he suggested cynically.
“No,” she answered, with an energetic little nod, “it must not. That is the way to manage the world. Give it what it expects; and just a little more to keep its attention fixed.”
Sir John tapped with his gloved finger pensively on the knob of his silver-mounted cane.