d. She was of
French extraction, the last survivor of an illustrious family; and
reconciled as she had become to England--for years she had hardly
left London--a slight and very pretty accent, and this trick of her
shoulders, remained to remind people that her point of view was
still essentially foreign. Rainham, who had from his boyhood found
England somewhat a prison-house, adored her for this trait. The
quaint old woman, indeed, with her smooth, well-bred voice, her
elaborate complexion, her little, dignified incongruities, had
always been the greatest solace to him. She had the charm of all
rococo things; she represented so much that had passed away,
exhaling a sort of elegant wickedness to find a parallel to which
one had to seek back to the days of the Regency. Of course, in
society, she passed for being very devout; and, indeed, her little
pieties, her unfailing attendance at Mass on days of Obligation, at
the chapel of the French Embassy hard by, struck Rainham as most
edifying. Really he perceived that her devout attitude was purely
traditional, a form of good manners. She remained the same wicked,
charming old Sadducee as before: her morocco-bound _paroissien_ might
appear on festivals and occasions; she still slept as often as not
of nights with "Candide" under her pillow.

The knowledge of a certain sentiment which they shared towards the
limitations of London (they were both persons strikingly without
prejudice) lent a certain piquancy to their old-established
relations, an allusive flavour to their conversation--it was always
highly seasoned with badinage--that puzzled many of their common
acquaintance enormously.

Mary Masters, as a shy and serious maiden, fresh from a country
parsonage, remembered well the astonishment, mingled with something
not unlike awe, with which she had first heard them talk. Philip
Rainham had been calling, as it might be now, when she arrived, and
Lady Garnett had promptly introduced him to her as her godson,
because, as she remarked lightly, if he is not, he ought to have
been. To which Philip had replied, in a like humour, that it was all
the same: if they hadn't that relation, at any rate their behaviour
implied it.

It was a novelty in her small and serious experience to find herself
in conjunction with such frivolity; she was almost inclined to be
shocked. Nevertheless, in the ten years during which she had made
her home in Parton Street, Mary Masters had surmounted he