Page:The Old Countess (1927).pdf/109

 nose and could smell out people's quarterings blindfolded!'

The old lady considered her. 'It is very unfortunate that ason should have so little reverence for his mother,' she observed.

'Yes. Itis. But Dick hasn't any reverence for anything.'

'Ah; he is a rebel; a libre penseur; one sees it in his face.—But a mother! In our eyes that is something set apart; something not to be criticized.'

'I know. It's awfully sweet of you. We're not like that,' said Jill. Though I myself get on awfully well with Mummy.'

She was thinking, with something of amusement, and something of indignation, of the deadly, relegating kindness with which her mother-in-law would place the poor old lady.  ' Déclassée, my dear Jill; quite déclassée, '  she would say, and Jill, who did not, as she would have said, give a hoot for the world, yet who had the shrewd sense of worldly values characteristic of her type, was well aware that such the old lady must be. It was apparent not so much in her situation as in her excesses and uncertainties of manner; her fumbling for an instinctive response that failed to come at a conscious bidding. Her innate pride, her innate dignity, still upheld her on the level way, as it were; but at an unexpected rise or fall of ground she tottered. 'Poor old thing,' thought Jill, lighting another cigarette and observing her hostess thoughtfully as she smoked; 'I'm glad we've come to make things a little