“And my dear Kathleen,” she continued, changing the subject with great agitation, “they say you mustn’t know Lady Mary; she, she, she isn’t respectable. There is something about her boy’s tutor and about a painter, a house painter, even, they say.” Katherine Massarene colored. “Dear mother, I know Lady Mary is not all she might be. She is light and foolish. But when you sent me to that Brighton school, a little frightened, stupid, miserable child, who could not even speak grammatically, Lady Mary noticed me when she came to see Enid and May (her own daughters), and told them to be kind to me, and asked me to spend the holidays with them; and they were kind, most kind, and never laughed at me, and took pains to tell me how to behave and how to speak; and I assure you, my dear mother, that Lady Mary might be the worst woman under the sun I should never admit it, and I should always be grateful to her for her goodness to me when I was friendless and common and ridiculous--a little vulgar chit who called you ‘Ma.’” Mrs. Massarene was divided between wrath and emotion. “I am sure you were a well-brought-up child from your cradle, and pretty-behaved if ever there were one,” she said with offence. “And I dare say she knew as how your father’d made his pile, and had an eye on it.” “Oh no, oh no,” said Katherine with warmth and scorn. “Lady Mary is not like that, nor any of her people; they are generous and careless, and never calculate; they are not like your Kenilworths and Karsteins. She is a very thoroughbred woman, and to her _novi homines_ are _novi homines_, however gilded may be their stucco pedestals.” Happily the phrase was incomprehensible to her hearer, who merely replied obstinately: “Well, they tell me she’s ill spoke of, and I can’t have you mixed up with any as is; but if she was kind to you, my dear, and I mind me well you always wrote about her as being such, I’ll do anything to help her in reason. You know, my dear,” she added, lowering her voice, for the utterance was treasonable, “I have found out as how all them great folks are all hollow inside, as one may say. They live uncommon smart, and whisk about all the year round, but they’re all of ’em in Queer Street, living by their wits, as one may say; now I be bound your Lady Mary is so too, because she’s a duke’s daughter, and her husband came into the country with King Canute, him as washed his feet in the sea--at least the book says so--and anything she’d like done in the way of money I’d be delighted to do, since she was good to you----” “Oh, my dear mother,” cried Katherine, half amused and half incensed, “pray put that sort of thing out of your mind altogether. Lady Mary has everything she wants, and if she had not she would die sooner than say so. And indeed they are quite rich. Not what my father would call so probably, but enough so for a county family which dates, as you rightly observe, from Knutt.”