halfway down the long room in a sandalwood chair, somewhat insulated by a surrounding sea of polished floor.  She sat with a smile on her lips, quite still, save for the continual movement of her white hands on her black lap.  To her gray hair some lace of Chantilly was pinned with a little diamond brooch, and hung behind her delicate but rather long ears.  And from her shoulders was depended a silvery garment, of stuff that looked like the mail shirt of a fairy, reaching the ground on either side.  A tacit agreement had evidently been come to, that she was incapable of discussing ‘the Land’ or those other subjects such as the French murder, the Russian opera, the Chinese pictures, and the doings of one, L——­ , whose fate was just then in the air, so that she sat alone.

And Nedda thought:  ’How much more of a lady she looks than anybody here!  There’s something deep in her to rest on that isn’t in the Bigwigs; perhaps it’s because she’s of a different generation.’  And, getting up, she went over and sat down beside her on a little chair.

Frances Freeland rose at once and said: 

“Now, my darling, you can’t be comfortable in that tiny chair.  You must take mine.”

“Oh, no, Granny; please!”

“Oh, yes; but you must!  It’s so comfortable, and I’ve simply been longing to sit in the chair you’re in.  Now, darling, to please me!”

Seeing that a prolonged struggle would follow if she did not get up, Nedda rose and changed chairs.

“Do you like these week-ends, Granny?”

Frances Freeland seemed to draw her smile more resolutely across her face.  With her perfect articulation, in which there was, however, no trace of bigwiggery, she answered: 

“I think they’re most interesting, darling.  It’s so nice to see new people.  Of course you don’t get to know them, but it’s very amusing to watch, especially the head-dresses!” And sinking her voice:  “Just look at that one with the feather going straight up; did you ever see such a guy?” and she cackled with a very gentle archness.  Gazing at that almost priceless feather, trying to reach God, Nedda felt suddenly how completely she was in her grandmother’s little camp; how entirely she disliked bigwiggery.

Frances Freeland’s voice brought her round.

“Do you know, darling, I’ve found the most splendid thing for eyebrows?  You just put a little on every night and it keeps them in perfect order.  I must give you my little pot.”

“I don’t like grease, Granny.”

“Oh! but this isn’t grease, darling.  It’s a special thing; and you only put on just the tiniest touch.”

Diving suddenly into the recesses of something, she produced an exiguous round silver box.  Prizing it open, she looked over her shoulder at the Bigwigs, then placed her little finger on the contents of the little box, and said very softly: 

“You just take the merest touch, and you put it on like that, and it keeps them together beautifully.  Let me!  Nobody’ll see!”