mother, he gracefully passed the ribbon round her neck, simply crossing the ends in front.
'Well, what is to hold it there, Pierre?'
'I am going to try and tack it with a kiss, sister—there!—oh, what a pity that sort of fastening won't always hold!—where's the cameo with the fawns, I gave you last night?—Ah! on the slab—you were going to wear it, then?—Thank you, my considerate and most politic sister—there!—but stop—here's a ringlet gone romping—so now, dear sister, give that Assyrian toss to your head.'
The haughtily happy mother rose to her feet, and as she stood before the mirror to criticise her son's adornings, Pierre, noticing the straggling tie of her slipper, knelt down and secured it. 'And now for the urn,' he cried, 'madam!' and with a humorous gallantry, offering his arm to his mother, the pair descended to breakfast.
With Mrs. Glendinning it was one of those spontaneous maxims, which women sometimes act upon without ever thinking of, never to appear in the presence of her son in any dishabille that was not eminently becoming. Her own independent observation of things, had revealed to her many very common maxims, which often become operatively lifeless from a vicarious reception of them. She was vividly aware how immense was that influence, which, even in the closest ties of the heart, the merest appearances make upon the mind. And as in the admiring love and graceful devotion of Pierre lay now her highest joy in life; so she omitted no slightest trifle which could possibly contribute to the preservation of so sweet and flattering a thing.
Besides all this, Mary Glendinning was a woman, and with more than the ordinary vanity of women—if vanity it can be called—which in a life of nearly fifty years had never betrayed her into a single published impropriety,
