Mrs. Swinford looked round the pretty room with an air of disgust. It would have been difficult to imagine anything more luxurious. The old grandfather’s decorations had been removed or softened with a taste more French than English, yet exquisite in its way. The curtains were of the softest rich stuffs. The walls were hung with a few bright pictures, little English water-colours, French genre subjects, as cheerful and smiling as could be desired. It was lighted with soft lamps carefully shaded, giving a subdued silvery light. There were books of all kinds, from those in rows of beautiful binding, which filled the low bookcases, to the French novels in yellow paper, which occupied the table at Mrs. Swinford’s hand. If there was anything wanting to the beauty or comfort of this wonderful little room it was difficult to find it out. Mrs. Brown instantly compared it with the sitting-room in the schoolhouse, and burst into a laugh. ‘You should see the rooms in which I live,’ she said, ‘and yet I don’t think they are bad rooms. I have known worse. I consider myself very well off. Oh, you are different, a great lady as you have always been, and I only a waif and stray.’ ‘That was at your own will, Artémise.’ ‘I know; I blame nobody. I have been the wilful one that have always taken my own way; you have generally succeeded in making other people take yours.’ Mrs. Swinford smiled faintly, and then she said, her face resuming its discontented expression: ‘That is over; now, it is my son I have to deal with; my son, who owes me everything.’ ‘Be reasonable; he owes you his birth, of course, and a great deal of petting when he was a boy----’ ‘And the sacrifice of my life,’ said Mrs. Swinford. ‘Do you think I ever would have done what I did and given up all I cared for, if it had not been for Leo? Do you think I would have cared for scandal or anything but for the boy? or for what his father might say or do? The whole thing was for him. Emily may thank him for her title, as they call it--ridiculous title! When I hear that name and her rank, talked of--her rank, forsooth--and that she takes precedence of everybody--even, I suppose, she will, with a fierce laugh, ‘of me----’ ‘Ah!’ said Mrs. Brown, ‘that’s something, I did not think of that; but take care, Cecile, that she does not take precedence of you in other ways.’ ‘In what way? You mean, I suppose, that she is younger and has a sort of beauty! I cannot deny that she has a sort of beauty. She is not the common pretty girl that Emily Plowden was. It is not for nothing that I helped to plunge her into the world. She knows something of life, and though she will never make anything of the advantages she possesses, still she has them. You may imagine I looked at her with sharp eyes enough, remembering what she used to be and what she was. But her world is not my world, and what do I care for her village precedence, or for any comparison that may be made here?’