She would like to say "my parents," but dreads Giddy's cynical smile. She could not bear to hear them scoffed at, even in their absence.
Instead she murmurs:
"That woman nursed me in her arms as a baby, tended me in childhood—loved me always."
Eleanor, on tiptoe, kisses the two faces in the photo.
"They are good," she says, "generous, kind-hearted; they might grace the grandest palace——"
"And smile at the claims of long descent," quotes the widow. "What a true little woman you are, Eleanor! Sometimes I half envy you, gaucheries and all!"
"I can't help being stupid, Giddy; I was not born wise, like you."
"Yet you really have developed marvellously under my training. The way you kept up the conversation at that dull luncheon party last week was admirable. I could not have done it better myself. As it was, a wretched sore throat condemned me to silence. How your badinage with Quinton astonished our hostess! She sat up so straight in her chair, I thought her fringe curls would reach the ceiling. She will never invite you there again, but it was simply splendid.
"'What do you think of Mrs. Roche?' I asked her afterwards, when Carol was bending over you in the window seat. She drew in her thin lips, and muttered: 'Most refreshing!' in a tone that meant something very different."
"What did it mean?" cries Eleanor, with a gasp.