She wanted to sit there quietly, savouring the scene.  But Mrs. Yaverland said in her terse voice:  “I’ve taken rooms at the Hapsburg for to-night.  I thought you’d like it.  I do myself, because it’s near the river.  You know, we’re near the river at Roothing.”  Ellen could not longer turn her attention to the spectacle for wondering why Mrs. Yaverland should speak of the Thames as if it were an interesting and important relative.  It could not possibly be that Mrs. Yaverland felt about the river as she felt about the Pentlands, for elderly people did not feel things like that.  They liked a day’s outing, but they always sat against the breakwater with the newspaper and the sandwich-basket while one went exploring; at least, mother always did.  Trying to insert some sense into the conversation, she asked politely, “Do you do much boating?” and was again baffled by the mutter, “No, it’s too far away.”  Well, if it was too far away it could not be near.  She was tired by the long day’s travel.

But the hotel, when they alighted, pleased her.  The vast entrance hall, with its prodigality of tender rosy light, the people belonging to the very best families who sat about in monstrously large armchairs set at vast intervals on the lawny carpets, were not in the least embarrassed by the publicity of their position and shone physically with well-being and the expectation of pleasure; the grandiose marble corridors, the splendid version of a lift, and the number of storeys that flashed past them, all very much the same, but justifying their monotony by their stateliness, like modern blank verse, made her remember solemnly her inner conviction that she would some day find herself amid surroundings of luxury.

The necessity of looking as if she were used to and even wearied by this sort of thing weighed heavily on her, for she felt that it was almost dishonour not to express the solemn joy this magnificence was giving her.  So she stood in the fine room to which Mrs. Yaverland took her, and after having resolved that the minute she was left alone she would touch the magnificent crimson velvet roses that stood out in high relief all over the wallpaper, she felt that she could not graciously withhold praise from this which was to be her own special share of the splendour.  She moved shyly towards Mrs. Yaverland, who had gone to the window and was looking down in the night, and said shyly, “This is a very fine room,” but, she knew, too softly to reach such markedly inattentive ears.  She stood there awkwardly, feeling herself suspended till this woman should take notice of her.  If her mother had been with her they would have had a room with two beds, and would have talked before they went to sleep of the day and its wonderful ending in this grand place.  She sighed.  Mrs. Yaverland turned round.

“Come and look at your view,” she said, and raised the sash so that they could lean out.