“I suppose they’re friends of Mrs. Kirkwood’s,” pursued Edna. “She’s like her brother—affects to despise fashionable society. Their pretenses always amused me.”
“They are sincere people,” said I. “They don’t pretend. That’s why I like them.”
“I notice that Armitage belongs to every fashionable club in New York—and to some over here,” said Edna with a smile that was as shrewd as her observation. “Also, that he manages to find time to appear at the most exclusive parties during the season.”
I had observed this same peculiarity. While I refused to draw from it the inference she drew—and was undeniably justified in drawing—I had been tempted to do so. It irritated me to see her finger upon the weak spot in Armitage’s profession of freedom from snobbishness.
“And Mary Kirkwood,” pursued Edna, “she’s the same sort of fakir. Only, being a woman, she does it more deceptively than he.”
“She goes nowhere,” said I.
“But she revels in the fact that she could go anywhere. So, she fooled you—did she?” Edna laughed merrily at my ill-concealed discomfiture. “But then you know so little about women.”
“I confess I’ve never seen in her the least sign of snobbishness or of interest in fashionable foolishness,” said I, with what I flatter myself was a fair attempt at the impartial air.
“That in itself ought to have opened your eyes,” said Edna. “Whenever you see anyone, dear, with no sign of a weakness that everybody in the world has, you may be sure you are seeing a fraud.”
“Because you have a weakness, dear,” said I—as pleasant and as acid as she, “you must not imagine it is universal.”