Jesse's method of reasoning, in approaching Mrs. Treharne on such a mission, was in no wise subtle; it was, on the contrary, as plain and pointed as a fence-paling. It all started from the outright premise that Jesse "wanted" Louise Treharne and thoroughly meant to "have" her—for Jesse had the merit (negative enough in his case) of never attempting to deceive himself as to his eventual purposes where women were concerned. Louise, of course, had plainly given him to understand that she despised him. That, however, was, in Jesse's view, a negligible detail. It would make his final conquest all the more satisfying. Many women who had begun by disliking him and frankly questioning his motives had ended by yielding to him; whereupon, after basking in the joys of triumph, he had taken a revengeful pleasure in casting them into what, in his self-communings, he brutally termed his "discard."
It would be the same, Jesse thoroughly believed, in Louise's case. She now represented to him a difficulty to be surmounted, a transaction to be successfully carried through. The weakness in the armor of men of the Jesse type is that they have little or no imagination. They foresee merely results; and their handling of the means to an end often is singularly clumsy and unadept. In regarding all women, of whatever class, as mere palterers with virtue and self-respect, Jesse considered that he was justified by his experience with women; but he made the egregious mistake of supposing that his own experience with women established a criterion, a formula, from which there could be no departure.
A week or so before he contemplated going abroad, mainly for the purpose of continuing his besiegement of Louise, Jesse dropped in at the house on the Drive one evening. He was glad to find Mrs. Treharne alone. He was not unmindful of his boast to Judd that he would victoriously overcome what, in his B[oe]otian imagining, he really deemed Louise's "prejudice" against him; and he preferred to lay his course without any Judd finger on his chart.
Mrs. Treharne, now thin and frail-looking, no longer from banting, but from the conflict with conscience that been consuming her ever since her daughter's departure, received him coldly enough. Not the least of her self-scornings since Louise had gone away had centered upon her complaisance in tacitly permitting her daughter to be pursued by a man of the Langdon Jesse type.
"I am leaving for England," Jesse found early occasion to announce.
Mrs. Treharne, very languid and tired-looking, did not find the announcement sufficiently important to call for comment.
"Louise, I believe, is in London?" pursued Jesse, sensing, without perturbation, the chill Mrs. Treharne was purposely diffusing.
Mrs. Treharne gave him a level, penetrating glance.
"Miss Treharne, I think, would not be interested in knowing that you possessed information as to her movements," she replied, with studied indifference.
Jesse smiled and stooped to stroke a dozing spaniel.