But against my aunt I cherished a stronger resentment every day. She
it was, with her inferior intellect and insect soul, who had in my
childhood prejudiced my mother against me and in favour of Frank,
because I showed signs of my descent from Fenella Stanley while Frank
did not. She it was who first planted in my mother's mind the seeds
of prejudice against Winnie as being the daughter of Tom Wynne.
The influence of such a paltry nature upon a woman of my mother's
strength and endowments had always astonished as much as it had
irritated me.
I had not learnt then what I fully learnt afterwards, that in this
life it is mostly the dull and stupid people who dominate the clever
ones--that it is, in short, the fools who govern the world.
I should, of course, never have gone to Belgrave Square at all had it
not been to see my mother. Such a commonplace slave of convention was
my aunt, that, on the evening I am now mentioning, she had scarcely
spoken to me during dinner, because, having been detained at the
solicitor's, I had found it quite impossible to go to my hotel to
dress for her ridiculous seven o'clock dinner.
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