She knows city life as you cannot know it, and, although she discards many of the burden—some conventions of society, she realizes the necessity of observing some of its laws.
She wanted you to feel that you had the background of a wholesome home, and the protection of clean, well-behaved married friends in your exposed situation; her attitude to you is just what she would want another woman to hold toward her daughter, were she grown up and alone in a large city.
You have been her guest, and she has been your good friend. Mr. Gordon admired you from the first, and that was a new incentive for this most tactful and liberal of wives to befriend you. She always cultivates the women he likes.
This is excellent policy on the part of a wife. If the husband has any really noble qualities or possesses a sterling character, he will appreciate and respect his wife's confidence, and never violate it; and added to this, he will usually become disillusioned with the women he has admired from a distance, when he sees them frequently at too close range.
A wife can make no greater mistake than trying to fence her husband about and obtruding high walls between him and the women he admires. Far better bring them near and turn on the calcium light.
Mr. Gordon is a born lover of the fair sex, a born gallant. He is, at the same time, a clean, self-respecting man. But he has grown a trifle selfish and a bit vain of late years.
He does not fully realize what the interesting family of children he shows with such pride to his friends has meant to their mother.
It has not occurred to him that to be the mother of three children, the youngest one year old, after six years of married life, has required a greater outlay of all the mental, moral, and physical forces than has been demanded of their father.
He is a good husband,—yet he is not the absolutely unselfish and liberal and thoughtful husband that Mrs. Gordon is wife.
If she seemed to you at all nervous, or less adaptable to your moods than he, you should stop and consider the many causes which might have led to this condition.