God knew her views on art, for she was not prodigal of them--her most remarkable pronouncement being delivered on hearing of the disappearance of the “Monna Lisa”: “Oh, that dreadful woman! I remember her picture perfectly. Well, I’m glad she’s gone. I thought she would some day.” When asked why, she would only answer: “She gave me the creeps.” She read such novels as the library sent, to save her daughters from reading a second time those which did not seem to her suitable, and promptly sent them back. In this way she preserved purity in her home. As to purity outside the home, she made a point of never drawing Frederick’s attention to female beauty; not that she felt she had any real reason to be alarmed, for she was a fine woman; but because men were so funny. There were no things in life of which she would have so entirely disapproved, if she had known about them, as Greek ideals, for she profoundly distrusted any display of the bare limb, and fully realised that, whatever beauty may have meant to the Greeks, to her and George it meant something very different. To her, indeed, Nature was a “hussy,” to be tied to the wheels of that chariot which she was going to keep as soon as motor-cars were just a little cheaper and really reliable. It was often said that she was a vanishing type, but she knew better. Pedantic fools murmured that Ibsen had destroyed her, but she had not yet heard of him. Literary folk and artists, socialists and society people, might talk of types, and liberty, of brotherhood, and new ideas, and sneer at Mrs. Grundy. With what unmoved solidity she dwelt among them! They were but as gadflies, buzzing and darting on the fringes of her central bulk. To those flights, to that stinging she paid less attention than if she had been cased in leather. In the words of her favourite Tennyson: “They may come, and they may go, but--whatever you may think--I go on forever!” VIII.--THE LATEST THING