There must have been an amazed incredulity in my eyes, to which her own responded by an unflinching black brilliance which suddenly seemed to develop a scorching quality even to the point of making me feel extremely thirsty all of a sudden. For a time my tongue literally clove to the roof of my mouth. I don’t know whether it was an illusion but it seemed to me that Mrs. Blunt had nodded at me twice as if to say: “You are right, that’s so.” I made an effort to speak but it was very poor. If she did hear me it was because she must have been on the watch for the faintest sound. “His heart engaged. Like two hundred others, or two thousand, all around,” I mumbled. “Altogether different. And it’s no disparagement to a woman surely. Of course her great fortune protects her in a certain measure.” “Does it?” I faltered out and that time I really doubt whether she heard me. Her aspect in my eyes had changed. Her purpose being disclosed, her well-bred ease appeared sinister, her aristocratic repose a treacherous device, her venerable graciousness a mask of unbounded contempt for all human beings whatever. She was a terrible old woman with those straight, white wolfish eye-brows. How blind I had been! Those eyebrows alone ought to have been enough to give her away. Yet they were as beautifully smooth as her voice when she admitted: “That protection naturally is only partial. There is the danger of her own self, poor girl. She requires guidance.” I marvelled at the villainy of my tone as I spoke, but it was only assumed. “I don’t think she has done badly for herself, so far,” I forced myself to say. “I suppose you know that she began life by herding the village goats.” In the course of that phrase I noticed her wince just the least bit. Oh, yes, she winced; but at the end of it she smiled easily. “No, I didn’t know. So she told you her story! Oh, well, I suppose you are very good friends. A goatherd—really? In the fairy tale I believe the girl that marries the prince is-—what is it?—-a _gardeuse d’oies_. And what a thing to drag out against a woman. One might just as soon reproach any of them for coming unclothed into the world. They all do, you know. And then they become—what you will discover when you have lived longer, Monsieur George—for the most part futile creatures, without any sense of truth and beauty, drudges of all sorts, or else dolls to dress. In a word—ordinary.” The implication of scorn in her tranquil manner was immense. It seemed to condemn all those that were not born in the Blunt connection. It was the perfect pride of Republican aristocracy, which has no gradations and knows no limit, and, as if created by the grace of God, thinks it ennobles everything it touches: people, ideas, even passing tastes!