Page:In The Cage (London, Duckworth, 1898).djvu/51

Rh names are in the papers—mamma has still the Morning Post—and who come up for the season.'

Mrs. Jordan took this in with complete intelligence. 'Yes, and I dare say it's some of your people that I do.'

Her companion assented, but discriminated. 'I doubt if you "do" them as much as I! Their affairs, their appointments and arrangements, their little games and secrets and vices—those things all pass before me.'

This was a picture that could impose on a clergyman's widow a certain strain; it was in intention, moreover, something of a retort to the thousand tulips. 'Their vices? Have they got vices?'

Our young critic even more remarkably stared; then with a touch of contempt in her amusement: 'Haven't you found that out?' The homes of luxury, then, hadn't so much to give. 'I find out everything,' she continued.

Mrs. Jordan, at bottom a very meek person, was visibly struck. 'I see. You do "have" them.'