udgment she watched her mother. Either Grace
was very big, or very indifferent to the sting of old Anthony's tongue.
Sometimes women suffered much in silence, because they loved greatly.
Like Aunt Elinor. Aunt Elinor had loved her husband more than she had
loved her child. Quite calmly Lily decided that, as between her husband
and herself, her mother loved her husband. Perhaps that was as it should
be, but it added to her sense of aloofness. And she wondered, too, about
these great loves that seemed to feed on sacrifice.

Anthony, who had a most unpleasant faculty of remembering things,
suddenly bent forward and observed to her, across the table:

"I should be interested to know, since you regard present conditions as
wrong, and, I inferred, wrong because of my mishandling of them, just
what you would propose to do to right them."

"But I didn't say they were wrong, did I?"

"Don't answer a question with a question. It's a feminine form of
evasion, because you have no answer and no remedy. Yet, heaven save the
country, women are going to vote!" He pushed his plate away and glanced
at Grace. "Is that the new chef's work?"

"Yes. Isn't it right?"

"Right? The food is impossible."

"He came from the club."

"Send him back," ordered Anthony. And when Grace observed that it was
difficult to get servants, he broke into a cold fury. What had come over
the world, anyhow? Time was when a gentleman's servants stayed with
the family until they became pensioners, and their children took their
places. Now--!

Grace said nothing. Her eyes sought Howard's, and seemed to find some
comfort there. And Lily, sorry for her mother, said the first thing that
came into her head.

"The old days of caste are gone, grandfather. And service, in your sense
of the word, went with them."

"Really?" he eyed her. "Who said that? Because I daresay it is not
original."

"A man I knew at camp."

"What man?"

"His name was Willy Cameron."

"Willy Cameron! Was this--er--person qualified to speak? Does he know
anything about what he chooses to call caste?"

"He thinks a lot about things."

"A little less thinking and more working wouldn't hurt the country any,"
observed old Anthony. He bent forward. "As my granddaughter, and the
last of the Cardews," he said, "I have a certain interest in the sources
of your political opinions. They will probably, like your father's,
differ from mine. You may not know that your father has not only
op