“Why didn’t you tell me so?” demanded she. “Why have you been plotting against me all this time?”
“You forbade me to speak of business,” said I. “So I have never spoken of my business friends.”
Her anger against me was almost beyond control. If she had been a lady born, if she had not had a past to live down, a childhood of vulgar surroundings and actions, she would have given way and abused like a fish wife. A lady born dares excesses of passion that a made lady, with her deep reverence for the ladylike, would shrink from. She said through clinched teeth:
“I find out that Mrs. Armitage, the leader of the younger set, the most fashionable woman in New York, has been eager to know me for a long time. And you have been preventing it!”
“How?” said I, amused, but not showing it.
“She called here the other day. She was as friendly as could be. We became friends at once. She said that for months she had been at her husband to get her leave to call on me, but that he and you, between you, had neglected to arrange it.”
I saw how this notion of the matter delighted her, and that the truth would enrage her, would make her dislike me more than ever. So, I held my peace and thought, for the first time, I believe, how tiresome a woman without a sense of humor could become—how tryingly tiresome.
“She and I are going to do a lot of things together,” continued Edna in the same intense humorless way. “I always knew that if I got a chance to talk with one of those women who could appreciate me, I’d have no further trouble. I knew I was wasting time on those religious fakirs and frumps, but I was always hoping that through them I’d somehow meet a woman of my own sort. Now I’ve met her, and something tells me I’ll have no further trouble.”
“Probably you’re right,” said I.
“How it infuriates me,” she went on, “to think I’d have been spared all the humiliations and heartaches I’ve suffered, if you had used your influence with Robert Armitage months—years ago. But no—you don’t want me to get on. You wanted to stick in the mud. So I had to suffer—and Margot, too.”