“You like remembering it?  Some people don’t.”

“Ah, no, that’s wrong!  I’d liked to have been beautiful once, if I’m old and ugly now,” cried Mrs. Penfold with fervour.  “Of course”—­she looked shyly at the sketch—­“I had beautiful draperies on.  My Galatea was not like that.”

“Draperies?” Lady Tatham laughed.  “Pygmalion had only just made her—­there had been no time to dress her.”

“We dressed her,” said Mrs. Penfold decidedly, “from top to toe.  Some day I must show you the drawings of it—­it’s not like that at all.  The girls think I’m silly to talk of it—­oh! they don’t say it—­they’re very good to me.  But I can see they do.  Only—­they’ve so many things to be proud of.  Susy’s so clever—­she knows Greek and all that kind of thing.  And Lydia’s drawing is so wonderful.  Do you know she has made twenty pounds out of her sketches this week!”

“Capital!” said Lady Tatham smiling.

“Ah, it means a great deal to us!  You see”—­Mrs. Penfold looked round her—­“when you’re very rich, and have everything you want, you can’t understand—­at least I don’t think you can—­how it feels to have twenty pounds you don’t expect.  Lydia just danced about the room.  And I’m to have a new best dress—­she insists on it.  Well, you see”—­the little pink and white face of the speaker broke into smiles—­“that’s all so amusing.  It puts one in good spirits.  It’s just as though one were rich, and made a thousand pounds.  I daresay”—­she looked, awestruck, at the Burne-Jones sketch—­“that’s worth our whole income.  But we’re very happy.  We never fret.  Lydia and Susy both help in the housework.  And I make their blouses.”

“How clever of you!  That’s a Fra Angelico”—­said Lady Tatham pointing, and not knowing what to do with these confidences—­“an Annunciation.”

Mrs. Penfold thought it quite lovely.  Lydia, when she was studying in London, had copied one like it in the National Gallery.  And her poor father had liked it so.  As they wandered on through the pictures, indeed, Lady Tatham soon came to know a great deal about Lydia’s “poor father”—­that he had been a naval officer, a Captain Penfold, who had had to retire early on half-pay because of ill-health, and had died just as the girls had grown up.  “He felt it so—­he was so proud of them—­but he always said, ’If one of us is to go, why, it had better be me, Rosina—­because you have such spirits—­you’re so cheerful.’  And I am.  I can’t help it.”

It was all sincere.  There was neither snobbishness nor affectation in the little widow, even when she prattled most embarrassingly about her own affairs, or stood frankly wondering at the Tatham wealth.  But no one could deny it was untutored.  Lady Tatham thought of all the Honourable Johns, and Geralds, and Barbaras on the Tatham side—­Harry’s uncles and cousins—­and the various magnificent people, ranging up to royalty, on her own; and envisaged the moment when Mrs. Penfold should look them all in the face, with her pretty, foolish eyes, and her chatter about Lydia’s earnings and Lydia’s blouses.  And not all the inward laughter which the notion provoked in one to whom life was largely comedy, in the Meredithian sense, could blind her to the fact that the shock would be severe.