In doing this she was supported by the knowledge that her presence was a presence to be felt impressively. Of her profile, it was mere economy of effort to say that it was like a cameo, aristocratically regular and clear-cut. Her hair, prematurely white, lent itself to the simplest dressing, too classic to be a mode. A figure, of which it would have been vulgar to use the word "plump," carried the most sumptuous costumes with regal suitability. Studied, polished, and perfected, she wore her finish as a mask that concealed the lioness mother which she was. It was the lioness mother who confronted the young couple as they turned in their promenade. Edith alone came forward. Her professor being given a bow so cold that it was tantamount to a dismissal, as a dismissal was obliged to take it. Within a minute, he was down both the flowered terraces and out of sight behind the lilac bush. Mrs. Collingham’s enunciation had the exquisite precision of the rest of her personality. "I thought I asked you, dear, not to encourage that impossible young man to come here." "But I can’t stop his coming without encouragement, can I, mother darling?" Mother darling moved to the edge of the flagged pavement, looking down on the blaze of summer’s final fireworks. On each of the two lower terraces fountains played, their back drops falling on the water lillies in the basins. It being the moment for a strong appeal, she sounded the first note without turning round. "Edith, I wonder if you have the faintest idea of a mother’s ambitions for her children?" Instinct had taken her to the root of the whole difference between the two generations in the family. Instinct took Edith to the same spot in her reply. "I think I have. But, on the other hand, I wonder if a mother has the faintest idea of her children’s ambitions for themselves." Following an outflanking movement, Mrs. Collingham threw her line a little farther. "It’s curious how, as your father and I approach middle age, we feel that you and Bob are going to disappoint us." "I’m sure I speak for Bob as well as for myself when I say that we wouldn’t disappoint you willingly. It’s only that the things we want are so different." "Ours—your father’s and mine—are simple and natural." "That’s the way Bob’s and mine seem to us." She was in a tennis costume carelessly worn and not very fresh. A weatherbeaten Panama pulled down to shade her eyes gave a touch of cowboy picturesqueness to an _ensemble_ already picturesque rather than pretty or beautiful. Leaning nonchalantly against the high, carved back of a teakwood chair, the figure had a leopard grace to which the owner seemed indifferent. Indifference, boredom, dissatisfaction focused the expression of the delicate, irregular features to a wistful longing as far as possible from the mother’s brisk self-approval. All this was emphasized by a pair of restless, intelligent eyes, of which one was blue and the other brown.