e.

"Well, I do. But I'm not enough, though I flatter myself that I'm a good
deal. It's unwholesome, such a life, downright morbid and unwholesome.
One should mingle with one's kind. I shall wonder at you, Augustine, if
you allow it, just as, for years, I've wondered at your father."

It may have been her own slight confusion, or it may have been something
exasperating in Lady Channice's silence, that had precipitated Mrs. Grey
upon this speech, but, when she had made it, she became very red and
wondered whether she had gone too far. Mrs. Grey was prepared to go far.
If people evaded her, and showed an unwillingness to let her be kind to
them--on her own terms,--terms which, in regard to Lady Channice, were
very strictly defined;--if people would behave in this unbecoming and
ungrateful fashion, they only got, so Mrs. Grey would have put it, what
they jolly well deserved if she gave them a "stinger." But Mrs. Grey did
not like to give Lady Channice "stingers"; therefore she now became red
and wondered at herself.

Lady Channice had lifted her eyes and it was as if Mrs. Grey saw walls
and moats and impenetrable thickets glooming in them. She answered for
Augustine: "My husband and I have always been in perfect agreement on
the matter."

Mrs. Grey tried a cheerful laugh;--"You won him over, too, no doubt."

"Entirely."

"Well, Augustine," Mrs. Grey turned to the young man again, "I don't
succeed with your mother, but I hope for better luck with you. You're a
man, now, and not yet, at all events, a monk. Won't you dine with us on
Saturday night?"

Now Mrs. Grey was kind; but she had never asked Lady Channice to dinner.
The line had been drawn, firmly drawn years ago--and by Mrs. Grey
herself--at tea. And it was not until Lady Channice had lived for
several years at Charlock House, when it became evident that, in spite
of all that was suspicious, not to say sinister, in her situation, she
was not exactly cast off and that her husband, so to speak, admitted her
to tea if not to dinner,--it was not until then that Mrs. Grey voiced at
once the tolerance and the discretion of the neighbourhood and said:
"They are on friendly terms; he comes to see her twice a year. We can
call; she need not be asked to anything but tea. There can be no harm in
that."

There was, indeed, no harm, for though, when they did call in Mrs.
Grey's broad wake, they were received with gentle courtesy, they were
made to feel that social contact