“We mustn’t linger,” said her mother; “it’s five o’clock. We’re to dine, you know, with Madame Galopin.” “I had quite forgotten,” Aurora declared. “That will be even more charming.” “Do you want me to assist you to carry her back, ma’am?” asked Mr. Ruck. Mrs. Church covered him for a little with her coldest contemplation. “Do you prefer then to leave your daughter to finish the evening with these gentlemen?” Mr. Ruck pushed back his hat and scratched the top of his head. “Well, I don’t know. How’d you like that, Sophy?” “Well, I never!” gasped Sophy as Mrs. Church marched off with her daughter. VIII I had half-expected a person of so much decision, and above all of so much consistency, would make me feel the weight of her disapproval of my own share in that little act of revelry by the most raffish part of the lakeside. But she maintained her claim to being a highly reasonable woman—I couldn’t but admire the justice of this pretension—by recognising my practical detachment. I had taken her daughter as I found her, which was, according to Mrs. Church’s view, in a very equivocal position. The natural instinct of a young man in such a situation is not to protest but to profit; and it was clear to Mrs. Church that I had had nothing to do with Miss Aurora’s appearing in public under the compromising countenance, as she regarded the matter, of Miss Ruck. Besides, she liked to converse, and she apparently did me the honour to consider that of all the inmates of the Pension Beaurepas I was the best prepared for that exercise. I found her in the salon a couple of evenings after the incident I have just narrated, and I approached her with a view to making my peace with her if this should prove necessary. But Mrs. Church was as gracious as I could have desired; she put her marker into her inveterate volume and folded her plump little hands on the cover. She made no specific allusion to the English Garden; she embarked rather on those general considerations in which her cultivated mind was so much at home. “Always at your deep studies, Mrs. Church,” I didn’t hesitate freely to observe. “Que voulez-vous, monsieur? To say studies is to say too much; one doesn’t study in the parlour of a boarding-house of this character. But I do what I can; I’ve always done what I can. That’s all I’ve ever claimed.” “No one can do more, and you appear to have done a great deal.” “Do you know my secret?” she asked with an air of brightening confidence. And this treasure hung there a little temptingly before she revealed it. “To care only for the _best_! To do the best, to know the best—to have, to desire, to recognise, only the best. That’s what I’ve always done in my little quiet persistent way. I’ve gone through Europe on my devoted little errand, seeking, seeing, heeding, only the best. And it hasn’t been for myself alone—it has been for my daughter. My daughter has had the best. We’re not rich, but I can say that.”