Chapter 30 - Page 2

the
heart and soul and life of her kind of girl. They ought to carry
out the will of God by falling passionately in love with each
other. They ought to marry each other and have a large number of
children as beautiful and rapturously happy as themselves. They
would assist in the evolution of the race."

"Oh! Mamma! how delightful you always are! For a really brilliant
woman you are the most adorable dreamer in the world."

"Dreams are the only things which are true. The rest are nothing
but visions."

"Angel!" her daughter laughed a little adoringly as she kissed
her. "I will do whatever you want me to do. I always did, didn't
I? It's your way of making one see what you see when you are
talking that does it."

It was understood before they parted that Kathryn and George would
be present at the small dinner and the small dance, and that a
few other agreeable young persons might be trusted to join them,
and that Lady Lothwell and perhaps her husband would drop in.

"It's your being almost Early Victorian, mamma, which makes it
easy for you to initiate things. You will initiate little Miss
Lawless. It was rather neat of her to prefer to drop the 'Gareth.'
There has been less talk in late years of the different classes
'keeping their places'--'upper' and 'lower' classes really strikes
one as vulgar."

"We may 'keep our places'," the Duchess said. "We may hold on to
them as firmly as we please. It is the places themselves which
are moving, my dear. It is not unlike the beginning of a landslide."

Robin went to Dowie's room the next evening and stood a moment in
silence watching her sewing before she spoke. She looked anxious
and even pale.

"Her grace is going to give a party to some young people, Dowie,"
she said. "She wishes me to be present. I--I don't know what to
do."

"What you must do, my dear, is to put on your best evening frock
and go downstairs and enjoy yourself as the other young people
will. Her grace wants you to see someone your own age," was Dowie's
answer.

"But I am not like the others. I am only a girl earning her living
as a companion. How do I know--"

"Her grace knows," Dowie said. "And what she asks you to do it is
your duty to do--and do it prettily."

Robin lost even a shade more colour.

"Do you realize that I have never been to a party in my life--not
even to a children's party, Dowie? I shall not know how to behave
myself."

"You know how to talk nicely to people, and you know how to sit
down and rise from your chair and move about a room like a