“Do you not understand that even petty people can see how dreary and stupid their lives are when a person like Madeline comes along? So they hate her.”
“It’s good of you to consider my feelings how they grow, and to try to bolster them up,” Madeline smiled. “But I am fearfully tired. I must go home. I hope that my father and mother will never hear of this.”
“Why should they?” said Mr. Lenox. “It’s only a trifle after all, though, to be true to her nature, Vera must needs philosophize about it. It’s only a trifle.”
“Except for Dick,” Ellery exploded.
“Except for Dick,” Mr. Lenox echoed.
“It’s a great pity,” Mrs. Lenox meditated, “that Dick can’t knock her down and then they could start again on a proper basis.”
“It is a disadvantage to be a gentleman,” laughed her husband.
“Vera,” said Madeline impulsively, “you won’t let this make any difference between us and Mrs. Percival? If she is a little twisted, poor child, she has had a cruel training; and she needs decent women all the more. I—I really have quite got over my anger with her—and don’t let us lose Dick. Dick is like my brother. I mustn’t break with him. We must all be good to him.”
“I do not know that I feel any large philanthropy,” answered Mrs. Lenox, with something between a laugh and a wry face. “But as I have invited them as well as you to spend Easter with us in the country, I suppose the ordinary laws of society will require me to behave myself.” The older woman kissed Madeline warmly, and Ellery moved out with her. He had so entirely made up his mind to walk home with her that he quite forgot to ask her permission.
He began to talk to her about himself, for almost the first time in his reticent intimacy, and she forgot her own affairs, as he meant she should, in listening.