Oh, darling Topaz! She calls Mrs. Cotton’s interest in father celebrity collecting, and never sees that her own desire to inspire men is just another form of it—and a far less sincere one. For Mrs. Cotton’s main interests really are intellectual—well, social-intellectual—while my dear beautiful stepmother’s intellectualism is very, very bogus. The real Topaz is the one who cooks and scrubs and sews for us all. How mixed people are—how mixed and nice!
