"You may wonder, Gwen! But if ever you are a married woman with an unmarried grown-up daughter in England and a married one at Vienna, and a position to keep up—I suppose that is the right expression—you will find how impossible everything is, and you will find something else to wonder about. Why—only look at that dress you are trying on!" The grown-up daughter was Gwen's elder sister, Lady Philippa, the wife of Sir Theseus Brandon, the English Ambassador at the Court of Austria. Otherwise, her ladyship was rather enigmatical.
Gwen seemed to attach a meaning to her words. "I don't think we shall ever have a daughter married to an Ambassador at Vienna. It would be too odd a coincidence for anything." This was said in the most unconcerned way, as a natural chat-sequel. What a mirror was saying about the dress, a wonderful Oriental fabric that gleamed like green diamonds, was absorbing the speaker's attention. The modiste who was fitting it had left the room to seek for pins, of which she had run dry. A low-class dressmaker would have been able to produce them from her mouth.
The Countess assumed a freezing import. It appeared to await explanation of something that had shocked and surprised her. "We!" said her ladyship, picking out the gravamen of this something. "Who are 'We' in this case?... Perhaps I did not understand what you said?..." And went on awaiting explanation, which any correct-minded British Matron will see was imperatively called for. Young ladies are expected not to refer too freely to Human Nature at any time, and to talk of "having a daughter" was sailing near the wind.
"Who are the 'We'? Why—me and Adrian, of course! At least, Adrian and I!—because of grammar. Whom did you suppose?"
The Countess underwent a sort of well-bred collapse. Her daughter did not observe it, as she was glancing at what she mentioned to herself as "The usual tight armhole, I suppose!" beneath an outstretched arm Helen might have stabbed her for in Troy. Neither did she notice the shoulder-shrug that came with the rally from this collapse, conveying an intimation to Space that one could be surprised at nothing nowadays. But the thing she ought not to have been surprised at was past discussion. Decent interment was the only course. "Who? I? I supposed nothing. No doubt it's all right!"
Gwen turned a puzzled face to her mother; then, after a moment came illumination. "Oh—I see-ee!" said she. "It's the children—our children! Dear me—one has such innocent parents, it's really quite embarrassing! Of course I shouldn't talk about them to papa, because he's supposed to know nothing about such things. But really—one's own mother!"
"Well—at least don't talk so before the person.... She's coming back—sh!"
"My dear mamma, she's got six children of her own, so how could it matter? Besides, she's French." That is to say, an Anglo-Grundy would have no jurisdiction.
The dazzling ball-dress, which the Countess had professedly climbed all those stairs to see tried on, having been disposed of satisfactorily, and carried away for finishing touches, her ladyship showed a disposition to remain and talk to her daughter. These two were on very good terms, in spite of the occasional strain which was put upon their relations by the audacity of the daughter's flights in the face of her old-fashioned mother's code of proprieties.
As soon as normal conditions had been re-established, and Miss Lutwyche, an essential to the trying on, had died respectfully away, her ladyship settled down to a chat.