Louise sighed wearily and held up a pleading hand.
"Don't ask me such a question—please, mother," she entreated. "You don't know how the subject revolts me."
"But, my dear," her mother persisted, "what is it that you have against Mr. Jesse? I am entitled to know."
"I am not sufficiently interested in the man to have anything against him," replied Louise. "Is it not enough that I loathe him?"
"No, Louise, it is not enough," pronounced her mother, plainly ready for argument on the subject. "You are too young a woman to be forming prejudices or leaping to conclusions. What do you know about Mr. Jesse that has caused you to form such an opinion of him?"
Louise hesitated. Her intimacy with her mother had never been very great. There had never been any plain talk, or even mother-and-daughter confidences, between them. The theme as she had said, was revolting to her. But her mother deliberately chose to remain on that ground. There was no path around the point her mother dwelt upon. Louise entertained no thought of evading it.
"Mother," she said, leaning forward in her earnestness, "it is natural enough, I know, that you still regard me as a child. But, before I answer your question, are you willing to grant, at least for the time, that I am a woman?"
"Don't be so unmitigatedly solemn about it, Louise," demurred her mother, evasively. "My question was simple enough."
"Simple enough to put, but not so simple for me to answer," was Louise's quiet reply. "But I shall answer it nevertheless. The reason, then, why I do not intend to have any further contact with Langdon Jesse is that he is one of the most notorious libertines in New York; a man who regards women from a single angle—as his prey. Everybody seems to know that, mother, except you: and you don't know it, do you?" There was a pathos in the eagerness with which the girl asked the question; it spoke of a dim hope she yet had that perhaps, after all, her mother did not know about Langdon Jesse. Her mother's harsh, dodging reply quickly dashed that hope.
"Who has been telling you such scandalous things, child?" Mrs. Treharne demanded. "Laura Stedham?"