He had the courage to be unafraid of silences, and he ate his luncheon and thought about the pictures he had been seeing, and at last began to talk to Mathilde about them, while Adelaide made it clear that she was not listening, until she caught a phrase that drove her grandeur away.
"Near where we met my grandfather ?" Mathilde asked.
By this time Adelaide had gathered that the two had been in the museum, and the knowledge annoyed her not only as a mother, but as an aristocrat.

Without being clear about it, she regarded the love of beauty--artificial beauty, that is--as a class distinction.

It seemed to her possible enough that the masses should love mountains and moonlight and the sea and sunsets; but it struck her as unfitting that any one but the people she knew, and only a few of them, should really care for porcelains and pictures.

As she held herself aloof from the conversation she was annoyed at noticing that Wayne was showing a more discriminating taste than her own carefully nurtured child.

But all such considerations were driven away by the mention of her father, for Mr.
Lanley had been in her mind ever since Mrs.Baxter had taken her unimpeded departure just before luncheon.
"Your grandfather ?" she said, coming out of the clouds.