“Nonsense. What nonsense you talk, Florrie. One would think Lavvy was a vindictive woman. She’s as fond of the children as we are. After all these years! Besides, the thing that matters is not whether everybody gets to know, but that Hal should have----” “Hal’s Hal to me, whatever he did. I want to save him being punished, that’s all. But Lavinia _is_ vindictive. You’ve never seen it. You’ve only seen that she’s got a best-china-tea-set face and a pretty refined voice, and knows just the right thing to say.... D’you think I’ve liked it, having her always in the house to put matters right with you or Nina or Bunny, after I’ve maybe been too quick or clumsy and blundered somewhere? I’d have rather they stayed wrong, thank you. A paying guest’s one thing, for you know exactly what you’re getting from her; and how much ‘Aunt Lavvy’ here, and ‘Aunt Lavvy’ there, you can allow her for the money. But what she’s been doing in the house for the last fifteen years ... unless it was for you to keep on comparing her with me, as I’ve seen you doing over and over again. And the children, too. But they can be excused, because she’s clever, and she worked for it, and the Lord gave her silver hair and a sweet voice, and it’s worth a bit of play-acting to be the one in the house that everybody comes to first. But you, Tom, to have been taken in too--she’s selfish and hard, for all her soft ways, and as obstinate.... Well, you’ll see in the next few days, and I’m glad of it, because for you to have thought she was the sort of lady you’d rather have married--and I’ve seen you thinking it over and over again. Oh, I may talk too loud and laugh too heartily, and perhaps I’m not dainty enough, and my dresses don’t look like Lavvy’s.... Nina says they always gape where they do up.... For all that, when it comes to a wife, you’re better off with me than with her, or else you ought to have known beforehand which was the kind you admire, and not have special manners for her and the ordinary kind will do for me....” And having several times worked up to a climax without achieving it, Mrs. Maxwell went on with the suspended work of fastening that thick untidy tail of black hair. She was rather tremulous, but hopeful, now that she had at last relieved herself, that Tom would give the cue for a sentimental reconciliation. As a matter of fact, the poor woman believed that she had expressed her secret bitterness far more poignantly than was actually the case. Her personality was not fitted to translate pathos ... with those dropping hairpins, and the bodice of her purple stuff dress dangling limply downwards from the waist, where she had just now slipped her arms out, to wash.