“Is that so? Would you not dictate to me, nor talk to others about me, nor flinch from your duty if I neglected mine?”
“I only know,” said Ethelbert after a pause, “whatever comes to me to be done, I shall do, but I shall accommodate my actions to new circumstances which may arise, for I should be sorry to have anything come between Reginald and his best development, or between you and yours. The development of the individual is the point; all else is inconsiderable.”
“Now look at me,” said Mrs. Mancredo, taking her hand tightly, and looking her straight in the eyes. “Remember what you have said, for I shall not forget it. Listen: I am Reginald Grove’s wife.”
Ethel caught her breath, for this she had not foreseen.
“Now, then, how far will you practice your personal liberty principles? How much will you leave me in perfect freedom to choose my own duty? Remember, you have said you would be sorry to have anything come between Reginald and his best development, and me and mine, and that all the rest amounts to little either way.
“Now, then,” she continued, starting off again after a little pause, “if you don’t want anything to come between me and my best development, you will let me give up my life there at the hotel, and you will make the changes in your house that I suggest, and let me pay you the hotel prices, and bring along my carriage and servant John, and take me into the family on the ‘personal liberty principle’ with which you four heavenly mortals control or don’t control each other’s lives. And you will angelically mind your heaven-appointed business of evoking Regie’s lost angel, and leave me to evolve my own as best I can.”
By this time Ethelbert’s beryl eyes were looking into Mrs. Mancredo’s black ones, as if this arrangement were a simple plan for a lawn party.
“Why don’t you look disgusted at a woman who passes as rich Mr. Mancredo’s widow, and who is really Reginald Grove’s wife, and has never been any other man’s wife, nor anything like it, in any way to anybody!”
“Disgust must be too unpleasant a feeling to take on one’s self prematurely,” said Ethelbert, with her rare sweet smile, as she took Mrs. Mancredo’s hands in hers and sat looking way down through the turbulent surface of her eyes, into the sorrowful depths beneath; then: “When I learn all, I am sure I shall have reason to congratulate you, that with all your temptations and perplexities you have done so well.”
“How well?”