Edna showed none of her familiar scorn of sordid things. She reflected, said uncertainly: “I wonder would that do any good?”
“To win anyone give them what they most want,” said I. “What do your friends over here want above everything and anything?”
“Perhaps you are right,” confessed she. Consider, gentle reader, what this confession involved, how it exposed the rotten insincerity of all her and her fine friends’ pretenses. “Yes, I guess you’re right, Godfrey.” She pressed her hands to her temples. “It simply must be straightened out. I am quite distracted. I can’t afford to lose sleep and to be harrowed up. Those things mean ruin to a woman’s looks. And what would I do if she were flung back on my hands in this disgraceful fashion!”
“You want me to go to London?”
“Godfrey, you must go. You must see her, and him, too.”
“I was thinking it would be enough to see him. But perhaps you’re right.”
“She is clean mad,” cried Edna, with sudden fury against her daughter. “She doesn’t appreciate the peril of her position. One minute she’s all for groveling. The next she talks like an idiot about her rank and power. Oh, she is a fool—a fool! I always knew she was—though I wouldn’t admit it to myself. You never will know what a time I’ve had training her to hide it enough to make a pleasing appearance. She is a brainless fool.”
“A fool, but not brainless,” said I. “Her education made her a fool and paralyzed her brain. You see, she didn’t have the advantages you had in your early training. In your early days you had the chance to learn something—the useful things that have saved you from the consequences of such folly as you’ve taught her.”
“What nonsense!” cried Edna in disgust. “But we mustn’t quarrel. I’m agitated enough already. You will go to London?”
“Yes,” said I, after reflecting. “I’ll go.”