Yet, how could there be, when no one knew better than she that the laborers on the Malloring estate were better off than those on nine out of ten estates; better paid and better housed, and--better looked after in their morals.

Was she to give up that ?--when she knew that she WAS better able to tell what was good for them than they were themselves.

After all, without stripping herself naked of every thought, experience, and action since her birth, how could she admit that she was not better able?
And slowly, in the white room with the moss-green carpet, she recovered, till there was only just a touch of soreness left, at the injustice implicit in their words.

Those two had been 'miserably brought up,' had never had a chance of finding their proper place, of understanding that they were just two callow young things, for whom Life had some fearful knocks in store.

She could even feel now that she had meant that saying: 'I am sorry for you two!' She WAS sorry for them, sorry for their want of manners and their point of view, neither of which they could help, of course, with a mother like that.