feet taste. Much, by her measure, for the previous
hour, appeared, in connection with this revelation of
it, to have happened to her a quantity expressed in
introductions of charming new people, in walks
through halls of armour, of pictures, of cabinets, of
tapestry, of tea-tables, in an assault of reminders
that this largeness of style was the sign of appointed
felicity. The largeness of style was the great con
taining vessel, while everything else, the pleasant
personal affluence, the easy, murmurous welcome,
the honoured age of illustrious host and hostess, all
at once so distinguished and so plain, so public and
so shy, became but this or that element of the infu
sion. The elements melted together and seasoned
the draught, the essence of which might have struck
the- girl as distilled into the small cup of iced coffee
she had vaguely accepted from somebody, while a
fuller flood, somehow, kept bearing her up all the
freshness of response of her young life the freshness
of the first and only prime. What had perhaps
brought on just now a kind of climax was the fact
of her appearing to make out, through Aunt Maud,
what was really the matter. It couldn't be less than
a climax for a poor shaky maiden to find it put to
her of a sudden that she herself was the matter for
that was positively what, on Mrs. Lowder's part, it
came to. Everything was great, of course, in great
pictures, and it was doubtless precisely a part of the
brilliant life since the brilliant life, as one had faint
ly figured it, clearly was humanly led that all im-

[[229]]

p228 _ -chap- _ toc-1 _ p229w _ toc-2 _ +chap+ _ p230

v?