Chapter 8

I had half expected that Mrs. Church would make me feel the weight of
her disapproval of my own share in that little act of revelry in the
English Garden. But she maintained her claim to being a highly
reasonable woman--I could not but admire the justice of this
pretension--by recognising my irresponsibility. I had taken her
daughter as I found her, which was, according to Mrs. Church's view,
in a very equivocal position. The natural instinct of a young man,
in such a situation, is not to protest but to profit; and it was
clear to Mrs. Church that I had had nothing to do with Miss Aurora's
appearing in public under the insufficient chaperonage of Miss Ruck.
Besides, she liked to converse, and she apparently did me the honour
to believe that of all the members of the Pension Beaurepas I had the
most cultivated understanding. I found her in the salon a couple of
evenings after the incident I have just narrated, and I approached
her with a view of making my peace with her, if this should prove
necessary. But Mrs. Church was as gracious as I could have desired;
she put her marker into her book, and folded her plump little hands
on the cover. She made no specific allusion to the English Garden;
she embarked, rather, upon those general considerations in which her
refined intellect was so much at home.

"Always at your studies, Mrs. Church," I ventured to observe.

"Que voulez-vous? To say studies is to say too much; one doesn't
study in the parlour of a boarding-house. But I do what I can; I
have always done what I can. That is all I have ever claimed."

"No one can do more, and you seem to have done a great deal."

"Do you know my secret?" she asked, with an air of brightening
confidence. And she paused a moment before she imparted her secret--
"To care only for the BEST! To do the best, to know the best--to
have, to desire, to recognise, only the best. That's what I have
always done, in my quiet little way. I have gone through Europe on
my devoted little errand, seeking, seeing, heeding, only the best.
And it has not been for myself alone; it has been for my daughter.
My daughter has had the best. We are not rich, but I can say that."

"She has had you, madam," I rejoined finely.

"Certainly, such as I am, I have been devoted. We have got something
everywhere; a little here, a little there. That's the real secret--
to get something everywhere; you always can if you are devoted.
Sometimes it has been a little music, sometimes a little deeper
insight into the history of art; every little counts you know.
Sometimes it has been just a glimpse, a view, a lovely landscape, an
impression. We have always been on the look-out.