"Yes!" Isabelle exclaimed irritably. "I found her going over her dresses for the tenth time and brought her along…. However does she get that air of condescension! Look at her over there playing the grand lady in her pretty frock for the benefit of these children. Little Snob! She didn't get that from me."
"Don't worry. Wait a day or two and you will see the small girl she is reading to hand her one between the eyes," Renault joked. "She's on to Miss Molly's patronage and airs, and she has Spanish blood in her. Look at her mouth now. Doesn't it say, 'I am something of a swell myself?"
"They say children are a comfort!" Isabelle remarked disgustedly. "They are first a care and then a torment. In them you see all that you dislike in yourself popping up—and much more besides. Molly thinks of nothing but clothes and parties and etiquette. She has twice the social instinct I ever had. I can see myself ten years hence being led around by her through all the social stuff I have learned enough to avoid."
"You can't be sure."
"They change, but not the fundamentals. Molly is a little mondaine,—she showed it in the cradle."
"But you don't know what is inside her besides that tendency, any more than you know now what is inside yourself and will come out a year hence."
"If I don't know myself at my age, I must be an idiot!"
"No one knows the whole story until the end. Even really aged people develop surprising qualities of character. It's a Christmas box—the inside of us; you can always find another package if you put your hand in deep enough and feel around. Molly's top package seems to be finery. She may dip lower down."
'So I am dipping here in Grosvenor,' thought Isabelle, 'and I may find the unexpected!' … This was an empty quarter of an hour before dinner and Renault was talkative.
"Who knows?" he resumed whimsically. "You might have a good sense of humor somewhere, Mrs. Lane, pretty well buried."