As a
woman she is cribbed and cabined. What she has set herself to do is to
force what she calls 'The County' to recognise her, and marry off her
girl as well as possible. She has accomplished the first part through
sheer perseverance, and I've no doubt she will accomplish the second;
the girl is pretty and well dowered. I have a liking for the woman,
especially if I haven't seen her for a little. There is some bite in her
conversation. Mrs. Jowett is a sweet woman, but to me she is like a
vacuum cleaner. When I've talked to her for ten minutes my head feels
like a cushion that has been cleaned--a sort of empty, yet swollen
feeling. I never can understand how Mr. Jowett has gone through life
with her and kept his reason. But there's no doubt men like sweet,
sentimental women, and I suppose they are restful in a house.... Shall
we have coffee in the drawing-room? It's cosier."

In the drawing-room they settled down before the fire very contentedly
silent. Pamela idly reached out for a book and read a little here and
there as she sipped her coffee, while her hostess looked into the fire.
The room seemed to dream in the spring sunshine. Generations of Hopes
had lived in it, and each mistress had set her mark on the room.
Beautiful old cabinets stood against the white walls, while beaded
ottomans worked in the early days of Victoria jostled slender
Chippendale chairs and tables. A large comfortable Chesterfield and
down-cushioned arm-chairs gave the comfort moderns ask for. Nothing
looked out of place, for the room with its gracious proportions took all
the incongruities--the family Raeburns, the Queen Anne cabinets, the
miniatures, the Victorian atrocities, the weak water-colour sketches,
the framed photographs of whiskered gentlemen and ladies with bustles,
and made them into one pleasing whole. There is no charm in a room
furnished from showrooms, though it be correct in every detail to the
period chosen. Much more human is the room that is full of things, ugly,
perhaps, in themselves but which link one generation to another. The
ottoman worked so laboriously by a ringleted great-aunt stood with its
ugly mahogany legs beside a Queen Anne chair, over whose faded wool-work
seat a far-off beauty had pricked her dainty fingers--and both of the
workers were Hopes: while by Pamela's side stood a fire-screen stitched
by Augusta, the last of the Hopes. "I wonder," said Mrs. Hope, breaking
the silence, "what has become of Lewis E