Now Lady Ellington could not possibly have been called a conceited woman, and her conviction that she was herself pretty well abreast of the world was founded on sober experience. She was up to most things, in fact; the world, on the whole, did not worst her. Yet when Susan spoke of being abreast of the world, she was conscious that another plane altogether was indicated, a plane to which she had to struggle and aspire, whereas Susan moved quite easily and naturally on it. All the way from Golspie she had been labeling her hostess as conventional, but what if this conventionalism came out on the other side, so to speak, and was really the summit of worldly wisdom, a peak, not a mediocre plateau, where Susan and others walked gently about, as at some place of corrective waters, exchanging commonplaces. For Lady Dover, she was beginning to see, was not in the least conventional because it was the way of the world; she was conventional because she was made like that. It was the world, in fact, which was conventional because it was like Lady Dover, not Lady Dover who was conventional because she was like the world. Indeed she had spoken no more than the truth when she said the opinion of the world did not matter to her--it did not; she never had to take it into consideration, simply because it was quite certain to coincide with her own. And Lady Ellington found herself thinking that when Susan died her portrait ought really to be put in a stained glass window, a figure that should typify for all time the solid, respectable, virtuous aspects of the British aristocracy. They walked in silence for a few moments, for there was really nothing more to say on the subject. Then Lady Ellington took Susan's arm and pressed it. "It is a great, great relief to me to know you feel like that," she said, "and you have made my line with regard to Madge so clear. Poor Madge, I have been too hard on her, but the disappointment was so great. I could not help feeling for Philip, too." "Of course one is always sorry for people in trouble," said Lady Dover, "particularly if it is not their fault. I will write to Madge this morning. And now, do you know, it is almost time you went off to the river. I insist on your being Lady Salmon by this evening. Mr. Osborne is so quick and clever, is he not?" SEVENTEENTH