"I wish no seat there," she said decisively.
"Oh, its all arranged, my dear; and a good many others want the seats, but Ik was too prompt."
"I'll stay where I am," said Ida, sullenly.
"And have every one in the house asking why?" added Stanton, provokingly. "Mr. Van Berg treats you as a gentleman should. Why cannot you act like a lady toward him? If I were you I would not carry my preferences for the Sibley style of fellows so far that I could not be civil to a man like my friend."
"You misjudge me," cried Ida, passionately.
"You have a strange way of proving it. All that is asked of you is to sit at the same table with a gentleman who has won the respect and admiration of every one in the hotel, whose society is peculiarly agreeable to your mother and myself, and who has also shown unusual courtesy towards you ever since he learned who you were. What else can I think—what else can others think, than that your taste leans so decidedly to the Sibley style that you cannot even be polite to a man of high culture and genuine worth?"
"You are too severe, Ik," said Mrs. Mayhew. "For some reason that I cannot fathom, Ida does not like this artist; and yet I think myself that she would subject herself to very unpleasant remarks if she made any trouble about sitting at the same table with him."
"Can you not see," retorted Ida, irritably, "that Ik has not considered us at all, but only himself? He wishes to be near Miss Burton, and without giving us any chance to object, has made all the arrangements so that we must either comply or else be the talk of the house. It's just a piece of his selfishness," she concluded with tears of vexation in her eyes.
"Oh, come Ida!" said her mother coaxingly, "I can see only a mole-hill in this matter, and I wouldn't make a mountain out of it. As far as I am concerned, I should enjoy the change very much, and, as you say, the affair has gone too far now to make objection. I do not intend that either you or myself shall be the subject of unpleasant remark."
And so the matter was settled, but Ida's coldness and constraint, when they all met at dinner, very clearly indicated that the change had been made without her consent. Van Berg addressed her affably two or three times, but received brief and discouraging answers.