"She would!" said Mrs. Jerome significantly, her back still turned to Cornelia. "But what good does it do you? Nine-tenths of the people in Paris are perfectly proper; but they don't look it. The other tenth are perfectly improper; but they, as often as not, don't look it either."
The manikins received another inning. A brief one, though, for Mrs. Jerome inspected and dismissed them in quick succession.
"Well, well," she said, half aloud, "to think that you came from the tenements."
She gave Janet a quick, sceptical glance.
"I can scarcely believe it."
"I can scarcely believe it myself," said Janet, with a perfectly straight face.
Cornelia bit her lips and, flashing an angry look at her friend, went out of the salon, unable to trust her feelings any longer.
"If the Duchess got wind of it," Mrs. Jerome mused on, "that would finish Paulette's for me. She don't think a shop is a classy shop unless the proprietor has a classy pedigree."
"Oh, our pedigree will seem classy enough to the Duchess," said Janet, "if you don't give us away. And you can't do that, you know. I only told you in the strictest confidence."
"Don't you go shifting your responsibilities on me, young woman. If you want your secrets kept, you just keep them to yourself. I'm no safe deposit vault for anyone else's hidden thoughts. For your comfort I'll tell you this, though. I've never given my daughter food or information that I knew she couldn't digest. I'm too old to begin doing it now."