sympathies. Admiration was a sentiment unknown to her (it was one of the secret
griefs of her most noble husband against her) - first, as always more or less
tainted with mediocrity, and next as being in a way an admission of inferiority.
And both were frankly inconceivable to her nature. To be fearlessly outspoken in
her opinions came easily to her, since she judged solely from the standpoint of
her social position. She was equally untrammelled in her actions; and as her
tactfulness proceeded from genuine humanity, her bodily vigour remained
remarkable and her superiority was serene and cordial, three generations had
admired her infinitely, and the last she was likely to see had pronounced her a
wonderful woman. Meantime, intelligent, with a sort of lofty simplicity, and
curious at heart, but not like many women merely of social gossip, she amused
her age by attracting within her ken through the power of her great, almost
historical, social prestige everything that rose above the dead level of
mankind, lawfully or unlawfully, by position, wit, audacity, fortune or
misfortune. Royal Highnesses, artists, men of science, young statesmen, and
charlatans of all ages and conditions, who, unsubstantial and light, bobbing up
like corks, show best the direction of the surface currents, had been welcomed
in that house, listened to, penetrated, understood, appraised, for her own
edification. In her own words, she liked to watch what the world was coming to.
And as she had a practical mind her judgment of men and things, though based on
special prejudices, was seldom totally wrong, and almost never wrong-headed. Her
drawing-room was probably the only place in the wide world where an Assistant
Commissioner of Police could meet a convict liberated on a ticket-of-leave on
other than professional and official ground. Who had brought Michaelis there one
afternoon the Assistant Commissioner did not remember very well. He had a notion
it must have been a certain Member of Parliament of illustrious parentage and
unconventional sympathies, which were the standing joke of the comic papers. The
notabilities and even the simple notorieties of the day brought each other
freely to that temple of an old woman's not ignoble curiosity. You never could
guess whom you were likely to come upon being received in semi-privacy within
the faded blue silk and gilt frame screen, making a cosy nook for a couch and a
few armchairs in the great drawing-room, with its hum of voices and the groups
of people seated or standing in the light of six tall windows.
    Michaelis had been the object of a