"But I must have the whole in hand," pleaded Weedon.
"Well, you can't. Because I sha'n't give it to you. Not till I'm ready. You can publish a paragraph from time to time: 'Madame Beattie under the strain of recollection unable to continue her reminiscences. Madame Beattie overcome by her return to the past.' I'm a better journalist than you are."
"I'm not a journalist," Weedon ventured. "I practise law."
"Well, you run the paper, don't you? I'm going now. Good-bye."
And so imbued was he with the unassailable character of her right to dictate, that he did publish the fragment, and Addington bought it breathlessly and looked its amused horror over the values of the foreign visitor.
"Of course, my dear," said the older ladies—they called each other "my dear" a great deal, not as a term of affection, but in moments of conviction and the desire to impress it—"of course her standards are not ours. Nobody would expect that. But this is certainly going too far. Esther must be very much mortified."
Esther was not only that: she was tearful with anger and even penetrated to her grandmother's room to rehearse the circumstance, and beg Madam Bell to send Aunt Patricia away. Madam Bell was lying with her face turned to the wall, but the bedclothes briefly shook, as if she chuckled.
"You must tell her to go," said Esther again. "It's your house, and it's a scandal to have such a woman living in it. I don't care for myself, but I do care for the dignity of the family." Esther, Madam Bell knew, never cared for herself. She did things from the highest motives and the most remote. "Will you," Esther insisted, "will you tell her to leave?"
"No," said grandmother, from under the bedclothes. "Go away and call Rhoda Knox."
Esther went, angry but not disconcerted. The result of her invasion was perhaps no more bitter than she had expected. She had sometimes talked to grandmother for ten minutes, meltingly, adjuringly, only to be asked, at a pause, to call Rhoda Knox. To-day Rhoda, with a letter in her hand, was just outside the door.