Her father was changed.  He looked older and care-worn.  For the first time she began to wonder about her father.  What was he, really, under that calm, fastidiously dressed, handsome exterior?  Did he mind the little man with the sardonic smile and the swift unpleasant humor, whose glance reduced the men who served into terrified menials?  Her big, blond father, with his rather slow speech, his honest eyes, his slight hesitation before he grasped some of the finer nuances of his father’s wit.  No, he was not brilliant, but he was real, real and kindly.  Perhaps he was strong, too.  He looked strong.

With the same pitiless judgment she watched her mother.  Either Grace was very big, or very indifferent to the sting of old Anthony’s tongue.  Sometimes women suffered much in silence, because they loved greatly.  Like Aunt Elinor.  Aunt Elinor had loved her husband more than she had loved her child.  Quite calmly Lily decided that, as between her husband and herself, her mother loved her husband.  Perhaps that was as it should be, but it added to her sense of aloofness.  And she wondered, too, about these great loves that seemed to feed on sacrifice.

Anthony, who had a most unpleasant faculty of remembering things, suddenly bent forward and observed to her, across the table: 

“I should be interested to know, since you regard present conditions as wrong, and, I inferred, wrong because of my mishandling of them, just what you would propose to do to right them.”

“But I didn’t say they were wrong, did I?”

“Don’t answer a question with a question.  It’s a feminine form of evasion, because you have no answer and no remedy.  Yet, heaven save the country, women are going to vote!” He pushed his plate away and glanced at Grace.  “Is that the new chef’s work?”

“Yes.  Isn’t it right?”

“Right?  The food is impossible.”

“He came from the club.”

“Send him back,” ordered Anthony.  And when Grace observed that it was difficult to get servants, he broke into a cold fury.  What had come over the world, anyhow?  Time was when a gentleman’s servants stayed with the family until they became pensioners, and their children took their places.  Now—!

Grace said nothing.  Her eyes sought Howard’s, and seemed to find some comfort there.  And Lily, sorry for her mother, said the first thing that came into her head.

“The old days of caste are gone, grandfather.  And service, in your sense of the word, went with them.”

“Really?” he eyed her.  “Who said that?  Because I daresay it is not original.”

“A man I knew at camp.”

“What man?”

“His name was Willy Cameron.”

“Willy Cameron!  Was this—­er—­person qualified to speak?  Does he know anything about what he chooses to call caste?”

“He thinks a lot about things.”