es. For instance, it mayn't seem
much to you, but it's part of our agreement with Mr. Jervaise to provide
the Hall with dairy when they're at home--at market prices, of course. And
then they'll go to town for two or three months in the summer and take a
lot of the servants with them, and we're left to find a market for our
dairy as best we can, just when milk is most plentiful." She lifted her
hands for a moment in a graceful French gesture as she added, "Often it
means just giving milk away."

"Does your father complain about that?" I asked.

She turned and looked at me with a complete change of expression. Her
abstraction had vanished, giving place to an air that confessed a
deliberate caprice.

"To _us_," she said with a laugh that delightfully indulged her father's
weakness.

I needed nothing more to illuminate the relations of the Banks family.
With that single gesture she had portrayed her father's character, and her
own and her mother's smiling consideration for him. Nevertheless I was
still interested in his attitude towards the Hall--with Anne as
interpreter. I knew that I should get a version noticeably different from
the one her brother had given me on the hill that morning.

"But you said that your father hadn't much _respect_ for the Jervaises?" I
stipulated.

"Not for the Jervaises as individuals," she amended, "but he has for the
Family. And they aren't so much a family to him as an Idea, an
Institution, a sort of Religion. Nothing would break him of that, nothing
the Jervaises themselves ever could do. He'd be much more likely to lose
his faith in God than in the Rights of the Hall. That's one of his
sayings. He says they have rights, as if there was no getting over that.
It's just like people used to believe in the divine right of kings."

I do not know whether I was more fascinated by her theme or by her
exposition of it. "Then, how is it that the rest of you...?" I began, but
she had not the patience to wait while I finished the question. She was
suddenly eager, vivid, astonishingly alive; a different woman from the
Anne who had spoken as if in her sleep, while plunged in some immense,
engrossing meditation.

"My mother," she broke in. "The Jervaises mean nothing to her, nothing of
that sort. She wasn't brought up on it. It isn't in her blood. In a way
she's as good as they are. Her grandfather was an emigre from the
Revolution--not titled except just for the 'de', you know--they had an
esta