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!
