Nothing  really  mattered  to  her  but  that,  and  she
would  have  occupied  apartments  in  Whitechapel  if
they  had  been  an  item  in  her  tactics.  She  had  received
her  visitor  in  a  large  cold  faded  room,  furnished  with
slippery  seats  and  decorated  with  alabaster  vases  and
wax-flowers.  The  only  little  personal  comfort  for
which  she  appeared  to  have  looked  out  was  a  fat  cata
logue  of  the  Army  and  Navy  Stores,  which  reposed  on
a  vast  desolate  table-cover  of  false  blue.  Her  clear
forehead — it  was  like  a  porcelain  slate,  a  receptacle
for  addresses  and  sums  —  had  flushed  when  her
nephew's  crammer  told  her  the  extraordinary  news  ;
but  he  saw  she  was  fortunately  more  angry  than  fright
ened.  She  had  essentially,  she  would  always  have,
too  little  imagination  for  fear,  and  the  healthy  habit
moreover  of  facing  everything  had  taught  her  that  the
occasion  usually  found  her  a  quantity  to  reckon  with.
He  saw  that  her  only  present  fear  could  have  been  that
of  the  failure  to  prevent  her  nephew's  showing  publicly
for  an  ass,  or  for  worse,  and  that  to  such  an  apprehen
sion  as  this  she  was  in  fact  inaccessible.  Practically
too  she  was  not  troubled  by  surprise  ;  she  recognised
none  of  the  futile,  none  of  the  subtle  sentiments.  If
Owen  had  for  an  hour  made  a  fool  of  himself  she  was
angry  ;  disconcerted  as  she  would  have  been  on  learn
ing  that  he  had  confessed  to  debts  or  fallen  in  love
with  a  low  girl.  But  there  remained  in  any  annoy
ance  the  saving  fact  that  no  one  could  make  a  fool
of  her.
