he
insides of watches! She, the widow of a hero, a rich woman of social
importance! Congratulate _her_ and Robin and Robin's party! And not one
word of congratulating Mary Gray! Was Caroline Ilbert mad?

However, the thing impressed her. It worked by slow degrees into her
mind. She had listened often to such foolish heresies as that which
declared brains more important than rank or wealth. In a general way she
had not dissented. Brains were very important. Gerald had thought a good
deal of brains. If he had lived he had meditated a book on Napoleon's
Wars. She had often met writing and painting and musical people in her
friends' drawing-rooms. They had not appealed to her nor she to them.
But she had grown accustomed to their presence there and to meeting them
on an equality to which in her heart she had never subscribed.

However, she had the wisdom to see that there was no use in holding out
against her son and to console herself with the idea that Mary was going
to be a personage, even apart from the incredible social promotion of
marrying Sir Robin Drummond. So she actually reached the point of coming
in person to Wistaria Terrace to make a formal recantation of her
opposition to the marriage, and to take Mary to her imposing,
black-bugled breast.

To be sure the little house had almost driven her back from its
threshold. She filled the small shabby hall, she fell over the brushes
left by the general servant who had been scrubbing the oilcloth, not
expecting her ladyship; she sat uncomfortably on the green rep chairs of
the drawing-room staring at a Berlin-wool banner-screen which
represented a poodle with beads for his eyes, at the silver shavings in
the grate, and the school drawings, finished by the nuns, of the younger
Misses Gray. There were certain aspects of that drawing-room dear to
Mrs. Gray which Mary had been too tenderhearted to try to alter.

There Mary had found her and had been moved in her innermost humorous
sense; but she had been glad to be friends with Robin's mother, and so
had done her best to advance the reconciliation.

Lady Drummond had a surprising proposal to make. It seemed that her
friend, Lady Iniscrone, had placed at Miss Gray's disposal for the
wedding the big house on the Mall formerly occupied by Lady Anne
Hamilton. Lady Iniscrone wrote that they had heard of Miss Gray from a
friend of Lady Agatha Chenevix, and had felt interested in her progress
ever since. Of course, rememberi