He felt, as every sensible man would, that it was not her fault; the poor girl could not help having a dirty trull of a mother. He rather admired her for her independence. He saw the whole thing; the natural transition from Clara Neaves to Clarissa Eve, the genteel tastes instilled by the board school and kept up by the dainty dressing insisted on by the bar. Two rooms in North Street off Theobalds Road, gin and onions for supper, fist fights with other lady lodgers on the smallest pretext, frequent black eyes, noisy troops of dirty children--all the things which were part of her mother’s daily life--would speedily become intolerable to the daughter. He thought it very creditable in Clarissa to have thrown the old woman overboard. And he sat and waited patiently for Clarissa to come in, stroking the deerhound’s long head and giving affectionate looks back to those sad, brown eyes. Clarissa entered. Almost immediately behind her came Mrs. Neaves with the tray. Arnold pulled the deerhound’s ears rather nervously and looked at the two women. Clarissa was as cool as an ice pail; she seemed to sit a little more upright than usual, seemed to display her left hand with the engagement ring blazing on it--nothing more. The way in which she said: “Thank you. I shall want a little more milk,” to her mother, was superb. Mrs. Neaves had made no attempt to dress for the occasion; she hadn’t even taken off the sacking apron which was strained tightly across her big waist; her down-at-heel shoes went flip-flap as she crossed the room. Both Arnold and Clarissa could see, as the hem of the skirt kicked up, a circle of discolored skin where the stocking was torn. But Clarissa’s face remained cold and unmoved, like the cameo, as usual. Her expression rarely altered. She was the most apathetic, the most impenetrable-looking girl in the world. Her cheeks had never flushed and her eye had never faltered when men in the bar made doubtful remarks; she never flushed nor faltered now, with her poor, degraded old mother’s bare heel under her eyes. “You needn’t wait, Mrs. Neaves,” said Arnold, as Clarissa, with a charming young-matron air, began to pour out tea. Then he remembered that he hadn’t paid her, and feeling very uncomfortable he put his hand in his pocket, brought out a loose heap of gold and silver, and dropped eight shillings in the moist palm. He hated to pay her before her daughter. But he hesitated at going outside the door with her and doing it there, for fear Clarissa should take fright and think he had found out. But Clarissa never lifted her white lids. She only said, with an airy laugh and the milk jug poised affectedly from her dainty wrist with the jangling bangle, “Milk?” “Thank you, sir.” Mrs. Neaves bent her head to count the shillings and he saw again the line of pure, fair flesh below the collar of her bodice. “Good-afternoon, sir. Good-afternoon, miss.”