“I can’t make out what she wants, my lady,” said the nurse to Violet. “She told me she wished to come out. But it’s so warm, it can’t hurt her.” Violet went to the side of the bath-chair. “Well, Granny,” she said. “Have you come out to have tea with Aunt Hester and me?” Old Lady Yardley looked at her in silence: then transferred that unwinking gaze to Lady Hester. Lady Hester particularly disliked this grim silent observation: it gave her ‘the creeps.’ “I’ll be going for my walk,” she said. “Whatever Mamma wants, my dear, she doesn’t want us.” “Where’s Colin?” asked old Lady Yardley. “He hasn’t come, Granny,” said Violet. “I don’t think he’s coming to-day.” “Yes, he’s coming to-day,” said Lady Yardley. “Is he here now? Is he with Raymond? I want Colin.” “Granny dear, he’s in London,” said Violet. “We’ll let you know the moment he comes.” “Just a fad she’s got, my lady,” said the nurse.... It was impossible to speak of old Lady Yardley as if she was there. There was no-one truly there, unless Colin was there, too. The nurse turned to her charge. “You’d better let me take you back to your rooms, my lady,” she said, “and have a nice rest till dinner-time. You’ve seen for yourself that his lordship isn’t here.” Old Lady Yardley paid not the smallest attention to this. “I shall wait for Colin on the terrace,” she said to Violet. “I shall wait there till Colin comes. He is coming.” “Wheel her up and down then,” said Violet to the nurse. To Aunt Hester’s great relief, old Lady Yardley consented to have her chair turned round, and be wheeled away again. “She gives me the creeps, my dear,” said Aunt Hester, “though I know she’s my own mother. But there it is! Ever since I can remember she was cold and dead: the iceberg your Uncle Philip and I used to call her. A beautiful woman she was, too: it’s strange that your Uncle Philip and your father were such plain men.” “You took all her good looks, Aunt Hester,” said Violet. Aunt Hester loved firm little compliments, laid on with the full spade. “Well, I had my share of them,” she said, “but beauty ran to prettiness in me, and that’s a sad seeding. The Stanier style skipped my generation, and I daresay that’s why it came out strong in the next. Your Uncle Philip and your father, as I say, two plain men if ever there was one, and yet one was the father of Colin, and the other of you. You two have got it all: that’s what’s happened. There was never such a pair of Staniers as you, and as like as two peas. Make haste, my dear, and have a dozen sons and daughters, and there’ll be a dinner-table worth photographing when you’ve got your family growing up. Let them all be as wicked as hell, and as long as they have the good looks of their mother and father I’ll forgive ’em. There are enough plain folk in the world already who can be models of piety, but when I see a handsome boy, I want to see him kissing a pretty girl, as I’m too old for him now.” “Aunt Hester, you’re a pagan,” observed Violet.