Page:Arminell, a social romance (1896).djvu/411

Rh "Is it?" asked Arminell listlessly.

"Indeed it is. I know a great deal about the aristocracy. My sister-in-law moves in the highest circles. I read all the divorce cases in high life, and I have an intimate friend who is much in great houses—in fact, she nurses there. Persons of good family when reduced in circumstances become trained nurses. This lady has nursed Sir Lionel Trumpington, and I could tell you a thing or two about his family she has confided to me—but you are not married. She had the charge of chief Justice Bacon's daughter, who was a dipsomaniac, and so had the entrée into the best families, and has told me the most extraordinary and shocking stories about them."

After lunch, Mrs. Welsh said, "There now, go up to the parlour, and sit there an hour, till I am ready. I must see that the girl does your room, after which I will put on my walking clothes. I will take you where you can get crape, just a little crumpled and off colour, at half price. We will walk to the railway arch and so save a penny."

Arminell sat by herself in the drawing-room; the sun was streaming in, but Mrs. Welsh allowed the blinds to remain undrawn. She stood hesitatingly with hand raised to draw them, but went away, leaving them rolled up, a concession to the presence of a visitor.

Arminell's mind turned from her own troubles to the consideration of the life Mrs. Welsh and those of her social grade led. How utterly uninteresting, commonplace, aimless it seemed; how made up of small pretences, absurd vanities, petty weaknesses, and considerable follies! A few days ago, such a revelation of sordid middle-class triviality would have amused her. Now it did not. She saw something beside all the littleness and affectation, something which dignified it.

Everywhere in life is to be observed a straining after what is above; and the wretched drunken cook scrambling up a ladder that led to nothing, blindly exemplified the universal tendency. As among the plants in a garden, and the trees