qua,' Hermione was saying, in her strange caressive,
protective voice, as if she were always the elder, the mother superior.
'Vieni dire Buon' Giorno alla zia. Mi ricorde, mi ricorde bene--non he
vero, piccolo? E vero che mi ricordi? E vero?' And slowly she rubbed
his head, slowly and with ironic indifference.

'Does he understand Italian?' said Ursula, who knew nothing of the
language.

'Yes,' said Hermione at length. 'His mother was Italian. She was born
in my waste-paper basket in Florence, on the morning of Rupert's
birthday. She was his birthday present.'

Tea was brought in. Birkin poured out for them. It was strange how
inviolable was the intimacy which existed between him and Hermione.
Ursula felt that she was an outsider. The very tea-cups and the old
silver was a bond between Hermione and Birkin. It seemed to belong to
an old, past world which they had inhabited together, and in which
Ursula was a foreigner. She was almost a parvenue in their old cultured
milieu. Her convention was not their convention, their standards were
not her standards. But theirs were established, they had the sanction
and the grace of age. He and she together, Hermione and Birkin, were
people of the same old tradition, the same withered deadening culture.
And she, Ursula, was an intruder. So they always made her feel.

Hermione poured a little cream into a saucer. The simple way she
assumed her rights in Birkin's room maddened and discouraged Ursula.
There was a fatality about it, as if it were bound to be. Hermione
lifted the cat and put the cream before him. He planted his two paws on
the edge of the table and bent his gracious young head to drink.

'Siccuro che capisce italiano,' sang Hermione, 'non l'avra dimenticato,
la lingua della Mamma.'

She lifted the cat's head with her long, slow, white fingers, not
letting him drink, holding him in her power. It was always the same,
this joy in power she manifested, peculiarly in power over any male
being. He blinked forbearingly, with a male, bored expression, licking
his whiskers. Hermione laughed in her short, grunting fashion.

'Ecco, il bravo ragazzo, come e superbo, questo!'

She made a vivid picture, so calm and strange with the cat. She had a
true static impressiveness, she was a social artist in some ways.

The cat refused to look at her, indifferently avoided her fingers, and
began to drink again, his nose down to the cream, perfectly balanced,
as he lapped with his od