"No wonder they look bored," she thought.

"They are." What enormous importance they attached to trifles! What ludicrous tenacity in exploded delusions! And what self-complacent claiming of remote, powerful ancestors who had founded their families, when those ancestors would have disclaimed them as puny nonentities.

Their ideas were wholly provided for them, precisely as were their clothes and every artistic thing that gave them "background." They would have made as absurd a failure of trying to evolve the one as the other.

Yet they posed--and were widely accepted--as the superiors of those who made their clothes and furniture and of those who made their ideas.

And she had thought Dory partly insincere, partly prejudiced when he had laughed at them.