Mrs. Jerome drew Janet down to a place beside her on the leather settee.
"Now, my dear," she said, "I'd just as soon you didn't dig up ancient history. Unless it's going to relieve your mind. But I shan't be any the wiser for it when you've finished, trust me. Why, if you told me that you were a new version of the Old Nick himself, one look into your lovely gray eyes would convince me that it wasn't true."
None the less, Janet, not wishing to sail under false colors, gave a very short résumé of her life from the time she went to the Lorillard tenements in Kips Bay to the day she left M. St. Hilaire.
Throughout this narrative, Mrs. Jerome's round little face was sphinx-like, becoming animated only at the point of Janet's separation from Claude.
"He left you in the lurch, then?" she had interposed, much affected.
"Oh, no, he would have kept on providing for me," said Janet, evasively, and after a moment's hesitation.
Nobody had really believed the story that she had left Claude. Even Robert appeared to take the reverse for granted. Perhaps, on the whole, she had better fall into a view that people would be sure to adopt in any case, and that she was almost beginning to adopt herself.
"But of course you didn't let him," said Mrs. Jerome.
"No."
"Good. We mustn't be under any obligation of that sort to the selfish sex. Now don't worry about the matter any more. You're a plucky girl, my dear. Keep your pluck, and your pluck will keep you."