‘You think children without exception should be kept in their nurseries’?’ Dinah called to mind a group of four that passed her window on their road to the rose-show. She remembered a small figure dancing with exultation on rainbow-hued flounces. ‘My dear soul! Fancy putting such a question to me, a mother! Of course I make an exception of my own daughter. She is a good quiet little monkey,’ added Linda; ‘although Mr. Arbuthnot is positively spoiling her fast--I hope I impose her on no one. Children, as a rule, I look upon from the governess point of view. You know how my bread was earned when I was young?’ ‘Mr. Arbuthnot has told me that he first met you in Paris.’ ‘Yes, in the domestic service of Madame Moïse Benjamin. I got twenty pounds a year and my washing. I had to sleep under the roof, to play dance music, to remodel Madame’s dresses, to teach English to the three girl Benjamins and a boy--ah, that boy!’ said Linda, between her teeth. ‘If you think me like Becky Sharpe ... confess now, you _do_ think me like Becky Sharpe?’ ‘I do not, indeed.’ Dinah’s manner grew colder and colder. ‘I never heard of Becky Sharpe before.’ ‘Well, if you had,’ said Linda, in high good humour, and storing up all the little scene against future dramatisation--‘if you had heard of Becky Sharpe, and had thought me like her, where would be the wonder? I was brought up just as Becky was, to live by my wits. My mamma--I connect her hazily with sofa cushions, much white embroidery, an Italian greyhound, doctors, and the smell of ether--my mamma died when I was four years old. She lies in Brussels cemetery,’ ran on Linda, drawing a hasty outline of a tombstone on the sand, ‘with Lady Constantia Smythe, and more than one side allusion to the peerage graven above her head. At the time she died we had not very definite daily bread. Still, my grandfather was an earl, and poor papa found one of his few consolations in making much of our nobility.’ Frankness, it would seem, was Linda Thorne’s strong point, but Dinah was unmoved by it. The earldom dazzled Gaston Arbuthnot’s lowly-born wife no more than Linda’s personal confidences propitiated her. Dinah had a child’s instinct for friends and for enemies. She liked, she disliked, unerringly, and was too transparently honest to mask her feelings. Stooping down, she picked up another shell from the sea’s smooth edge. She sought once more to widen the space between herself and her companion. Linda Thorne’s quick brain observed the movement, divined the intention.