An ugly sneer flickered across Jesse's features. At length the barbs were hitting home. But he effaced the sneer and twisted it into a forced smile.
"What I can't understand is why you received me at all this evening, if this is your feeling—your newly-formed feeling—toward me," he said, quelling the hoarseness that proceeded from his repressed anger.
"I confess to having entertained a certain curiosity, perhaps a certain uneasiness, as to your purpose in calling at all," promptly replied Mrs. Treharne. "It is the first time you have been here since my daughter's departure. I have been sorting over certain of my mistakes since she went away. I have been considering them, too, from a different angle than any you could possibly understand. Not the least of these mistakes, as I have told you, was in permitting my daughter to exchange as much as two words with you. Happily, it is not too late to rectify that mistake, at least. She is well protected. I need not tell you that if you should have the temerity to attempt to call upon her in London she would instruct the flunkeys to cease carrying her your card. I think there is no more to be said?" Mrs. Treharne rose and assumed the attitude of dismissal.
This time Jesse, also rising, did not essay to erase the sneer from his wrath-flushed features.
"What is all this—a scene from some damned imbecile play?" he demanded, completely throwing off the mask. "Are you trying to regale me with a rehearsal of the flighty mother turned virtuous? Don't do that. That isn't the sort of thing you could reasonably expect me to stand for from Fred Judd's kept wo——"
"Say that if you dare!" exclaimed Mrs. Treharne, stepping close to him and transfixing him with blazing eyes.
Jesse, out of sheer timidity, broke off at the exact point where she had interrupted him. As she stepped to the wall to ring, he put on his hat with studied deliberation and patted it to make it more secure on his head. Thus, with his hat on, he spoke to her.
"I suppose your solicitude for the—er—the what-you-may-call-it of your auburn-haired daughter is natural enough, probably being based upon something that you, and you alone, know," he said, sidling, however, toward the door as he spoke. "But it is wasted solicitude, let me tell you that. She has lived here with you, hasn't she? Well, that fact will about settle her, you know. There's no downing that. And after awhile she'll give up. She won't be able to stand the stigma. None of them can stand it. It would take a superwoman to endure, without herself surrendering, the ignominy of having lived under this roof. Don't forget that."
Then the butler, answering the ring, appeared at the door. Mrs. Treharne raised a limp arm and pointed to Jesse.
"This man," she said to the butler, "is not to be admitted to the house again as long as I am in it."