‘Oh, well,’ she said, ‘one has to remember how little you know of things, poor dear! Your innocence is really beautiful--if it weren’t so pathetic. You will have a rude awakening one of these days. I am afraid there can be no doubt that your husband has already----’ She broke off, daunted by the look in Gundred’s eyes. The immemorial pride of the Mortimers gleamed and flashed in them. Gundred might have been brought up to be calm, unemotional, well mannered, but she came of a race that had never allowed itself to be baited by inferiors. And almost everyone else in the world was an inferior. Gundred fixed a chilling stare on Mrs. Mimburn’s excited face. ‘Be quiet, please,’ she said; ‘I am afraid you are a very vulgar woman.’ All was over; Mrs. Mimburn was summed up and condemned in that one placid sentence, so judicially delivered. She could make no appeal; for the life of her, she could not even finish her remark. For the moment she was dominated by the force that came from her rigidly decorous enemy. Then in the silence, the door opened, and Kingston entered. Gundred turned towards him with a happy smile. ‘Isn’t it a pity,’ she said in pleasant, gentle tones. ‘Aunt Minna says she must go back to London to-morrow. Nothing can persuade her to stay, I find.’ Minne-Adélaïde stuttered and choked with wrath at this defeat. ‘Yes,’ she said, purple through her powder--‘yes--yes, I must positively go back to town--positively go back to town to-morrow.’ Gundred quietly resumed her work. CHAPTER XII