Mrs. Hope put up her glasses to regard her daughter.

“Dear me, Augusta, am I hearing right?  Who is more severe than you on the mad women who dance, and sup, and frivol their money away?  But there’s something in what you say.  The bairn needs a playtime....  To think that Jeannie Laidlaw’s son should change the whole of Jean’s life.  Preposterous!”

* * * * *

Mrs. Duff-Whalley was having tea with Mrs. Jowett when the news was broken to her.  It was a party, but only, as Mrs. Duff-Whalley herself would have put it, “a purely local affair,” meaning some people on the Hill.

Mrs. Jowett sat in her soft-toned room, pouring out tea into fragile cups with hands that seemed to demand lace ruffles, so white were they and transparent.  The room was like herself, exquisitely fresh and dainty; white walls hung with pale water-colours in gilt frames, Indian rugs of soft pinks and blues and greys, plump cushions in worked muslin covers that looked as if they were put on fresh every morning.  Photographs stood about of women looking sweetly into vacancy over the heads of pretty children, and books of verses, bound daintily in white and gold, lay on carved tables.

Mrs. Duff-Whalley did not care for Mrs. Jowett’s tea-parties, and she always felt irritated by her drawing-room.  The gentle voice of her hostess made her want to speak louder than usual, and she thought the conversation insipid to a degree.  How could it be anything but insipid with Mrs. Jowett saying only “How nice,” or “What a pity” at intervals?  She did not even seem to care to hear Mrs. Duff-Whalley’s news of “the County,” and “dear Lady Tweedie,” merely murmuring, “Oh, really,” when told the most interesting and even startling facts.

“Uninterested idiot,” thought Mrs. Duff-Whalley to herself as she turned from her hostess to Miss Mary Duncan, who at least had some sense, though both she and her sisters had a lamentable lack of style.

Miss Duncan’s kind face beamed pleasantly.  She was quite willing to listen to Mrs. Duff-Whalley as long as that lady pleased.  She thought she needed soothing, so she agreed with everything she said, and made sensible little remarks at intervals.  Mrs. Jowett was pouring out a second cup of tea for Mrs. Duff-Whalley when she said, “And have you heard about dear little Jean Jardine?”

“Has anything happened to her?  I saw her the other day and she was all right.”

“She’s quite well, but haven’t you heard?  She has inherited a large fortune.”

Mrs. Duff-Whalley said nothing for a minute.  She could not trust herself to speak.  Despised Jean, whom she had not troubled to ask to her parties, whom she had always felt she could treat anyhow, so poor was she and of no account.  It had been bad enough to know that she was on terms of intimacy with Pamela Reston and her brother:  to hear Miss Reston say that she meant to take her to London and entertain for her and to hear her suggest that Muriel might go to Jean’s parties had been galling, but she had thrust the recollection from her, reflecting that fine ladies said much that they did not mean, and that probably the promised visit to London would never materialise.  And now to be told this!  A fortune:  Jean—­it was too absurd!