“In gentlemen’s eyes, I suppose you mean?” said Miss Smeardon.
“Yes, in gentlemen’s eyes,” answered Lavendar, firmly. “Those of women are apparently furnished with different lenses. But here comes the fair object of our discussion, so we must decide it later on.”
The question of ancestors, a favourite one 103 at Stoke Revel, came up in the course of the next evening’s conversation, and Lavendar found Robinette a trifle flushed but smiling under a double fire of questions from Mrs. de Tracy and her companion. Mrs. de Tracy was in her usual chair, knitting; Miss Smeardon sat by the table with a piece of fancy-work; Robinette had pulled a foot-stool to the hearthrug and sat as near the flames as she conveniently could. She shielded her face with the last copy of Punch, and let her shoulders bask in the warmth of the fire, which made flickering shadows on her creamy neck. Her white skirts swept softly round her feet, and her favourite turquoise scarf made a note of colour in her lap. She was one of those women who, without positive beauty, always make pictures of themselves.
Lavendar analyzed her looks as he joined the circle, pretending to read. “She isn’t posing,” he thought, “but she ought to be painted. She ought always to be painted, 104 each time one sees her, for everything about her suggests a portrait. That blue ribbon in her hair is fairly distracting! What the dickens is the reason one wants to look at her all the time! I’ve seen far handsomer women!”
“Do you use Burke and Debrett in your country, Mrs. Loring?” Miss Smeardon was enquiring politely, as she laid down one red volume after the other, having ascertained the complete family tree of a lady who had called that afternoon.
Robinette smiled. “I’m afraid we’ve nothing but telephone or business directories, social registers, and ‘Who’s Who,’ in America,” she said.
“You are not interested in questions of genealogy, I suppose?” asked Mrs. de Tracy pityingly.
“I can hardly say that. But I think perhaps that we are more occupied with the future than with the past.”
“That is natural,” assented the lady of the 105 Manor, “since you have so much more of it, haven’t you? But the mixture of races in your country,” she continued condescendingly, “must have made you indifferent to purity of strain.”
“I hope we are not wholly indifferent,” said Robinette, as though she were stopping to consider. “I think every serious-minded person must be proud to inherit fine qualities and to pass them on. Surely it isn’t enough to give old blood to the next generation––it must be good blood. Yes! the right stock certainly means something to an American.”