Page:The Awkward Age (New York, Harper and Brothers, 1899).djvu/56

THE AWKWARD AGE whose conversation has absolutely no limits, who says everything that comes into her head and talks to the poor child about God only knows what—if I should never dream of such an arrangement for my niece I can almost as little face the prospect of throwing her much, don't you see? with any young person exposed to such an association. It would be in the natural order certainly"—in spite of which natural order the Duchess made the point with but moderate emphasis—"that, since dear Edward is my cousin, Aggie should see at least as much of Nanda as of any other girl of their age. But what will you have? I must recognize the predicament I'm placed in by the more and more extraordinary development of English manners. Many things have altered, goodness knows, since I was Aggie's age, but nothing is so different as what you all do with your girls. It's all a muddle, a compromise, a monstrosity, like everything else you produce; there's nothing in it that goes on all-fours. I see but one consistent way, which is our fine old foreign way and which makes—in the upper classes, mind you, for it's with them only I'm concerned—des femmes bien gracieuses. I allude to the immemorial custom of my husband's race, which was good enough for his mother and his mother's mother, for Aggie's own, for his other sisters, for toutes ces dames. It would have been good enough for my child, as I call her—my dear husband called her his—if, not losing her parents, she had remained in her own country. She would have been brought up there under an anxious eye—that's the great point; privately, carefully, tenderly, and with what she was not to learn—till the proper time—looked after quite as much as the rest. I can only go on with her in that spirit and make of her, under providence, what I consider a young person of her condition, of her name, of her particular traditions, should be. Voilà, ma chère. Should you put it to me if I think you're surrounding 46