If Darrow, on entering the drawing-room before dinner,examined its new occupant with unusual interest, it was moreon Owen Leath's account than his own.

　　Anna's hints had roused his interest in the lad's loveaffair, and he wondered what manner of girl the heroine ofthe coming conflict might be. He had guessed that Owen'srebellion symbolized for his step-mother her own longstruggle against the Leath conventions, and he understoodthat if Anna so passionately abetted him it was partlybecause, as she owned, she wanted his liberation to coincidewith hers.

　　The lady who was to represent, in the impending struggle,the forces of order and tradition was seated by the firewhen Darrow entered. Among the flowers and old furniture ofthe large pale-panelled room, Madame de Chantelle had theinanimate elegance of a figure introduced into a "still-life" to give the scale. And this, Darrow reflected, wasexactly what she doubtless regarded as her chief obligation:

　　he was sure she thought a great deal of "measure", andapproved of most things only up to a certain point.

　　She was a woman of sixty, with a figure at once young andold-fashioned. Her fair faded tints, her quaint corseting,the passementerie on her tight-waisted dress, the velvetband on her tapering arm, made her resemble a "carte devisite" photograph of the middle sixties. One saw her,younger but no less invincibly lady-like, leaning on a chairwith a fringed back, a curl in her neck, a locket on hertuckered bosom, toward the end of an embossed morocco albumbeginning with The Beauties of the Second Empire.

　　She received her daughter-in-law's suitor with an affabilitywhich implied her knowledge and approval of his suit.

　　Darrow had already guessed her to be a person who wouldinstinctively oppose any suggested changes, and then, afterone had exhausted one's main arguments, unexpectedly yieldto some small incidental reason, and adhere doggedly to hernew position. She boasted of her old-fashioned prejudices,talked a good deal of being a grandmother, and made a showof reaching up to tap Owen's shoulder, though his height waslittle more than hers.

　　She was full of a small pale prattle about the people shehad seen at Ouchy, as to whom she had the minute statisticalinformation of a gazetteer, without any apparent sense ofpersonal differences. She said to Darrow: "They tell methings are very much changed in America...Of course in myyouth there WAS a Society"...She had no desire to returnthere she was sure the standards must be so different.

　　"There are charming people everywhere...and one must alwayslook on the best side...but when one has lived amongTraditions it's difficult to adapt one's self to the newideas...These dreadful views of marriage...it's so hard toexplain them to my French relations...I'm thankful to say Idon't pretend to understand them myself! But YOU'RE anEverard--I told Anna last spring in London that one seesthat instantly"...

　　She wandered off to the cooking and the service of the hotelat Ouchy. She attached great importance to gastronomicdetails and to the manners of hotel servants. There, too,there was a falling off, she said. "I don t know, ofcourse; but people say it's owing to the Americans.

　　Certainly my waiter had a way of slapping down thedishes...they tell me that many of them areAnarchists...belong to Unions, you know." She appealed toDarrow's reported knowledge of economic conditions toconfirm this ominous rumour.

　　After dinner Owen Leath wandered into the next room, wherethe piano stood, and began to play among the shadows. Hisstep-mother presently joined him, and Darrow sat alone withMadame de Chantelle.

　　She took up the thread of her mild chat and carried it on atthe same pace as her knitting. Her conversation resembledthe large loose-stranded web between her fingers: now andthen she dropped a stitch, and went on regardless of the gapin the pattern.

　　Darrow listened with a lazy sense of well-being. In themental lull of the after-dinner hour, with harmoniousmemories murmuring through his mind, and the soft tints andshadowy spaces of the fine old room charming his eyes toindolence, Madame de Chantelle's discourse seemed not out ofplace. He could understand that, in the long run, theatmosphere of Givre might be suffocating; but in his presentmood its very limitations had a grace.

　　Presently he found the chance to say a word in his ownbehalf; and thereupon measured the advantage, never beforeparticularly apparent to him, of being related to theEverards of Albany. Madame de Chantelle's conception of hernative country--to which she had not returned since hertwentieth year--reminded him of an ancient geographer's mapof the Hyperborean regions. It was all a foggy blank, fromwhich only one or two fixed outlines emerged; and one ofthese belonged to the Everards of Albany.

　　The fact that they offered such firm footing--formed, so tospeak, a friendly territory on which the opposing powerscould meet and treat--helped him through the task ofexplaining and justifying himself as the successor of FraserLeath. Madame de Chantelle could not resist suchincontestable claims. She seemed to feel her son's hoveringand discriminating presence, and she gave Darrow the sensethat he was being tested and approved as a last addition tothe Leath Collection.

　　She also made him aware of the immense advantage hepossessed in belonging to the diplomatic profession. Shespoke of this humdrum calling as a Career, and gave Darrowto understand that she supposed him to have been seducingDuchesses when he was not negotiating Treaties. He heardagain quaint phrases which romantic old ladies had used inhis youth: "Brilliant diplomatic society...socialadvantages...the entree everywhere...nothing elseFORMS a young man in the same way..." and she sighinglyadded that she could have wished her grandson had chosen thesame path to glory.

　　Darrow prudently suppressed his own view of the profession,as well as the fact that he had adopted it provisionally,and for reasons less social than sociological; and the talkpresently passed on to the subject of his future plans.

　　Here again, Madame de Chantelle's awe of the Career made heradmit the necessity of Anna's consenting to an earlymarriage. The fact that Darrow was "ordered" to SouthAmerica seemed to put him in the romantic light of a youngsoldier charged to lead a forlorn hope: she sighed and said:

　　"At such moments a wife's duty is at her husband's side."The problem of Effie's future might have disturbed her, sheadded; but since Anna, for a time, consented to leave thelittle girl with her, that problem was at any rate deferred.

　　She spoke plaintively of the responsibility of looking afterher granddaughter, but Darrow divined that she enjoyed theflavour of the word more than she felt............