Mrs. Jerome added that she hoped Claude Fontaine had not behaved any worse than Janet had represented. She knew the young man. Who in New York didn't? As regards possible criticism, Janet should be comforted with the reflection that glass houses made the whole world kin, human architecture being nowhere complete without them. Why, most of the girls in the Younger Set had lost their heads over Claude, which was all they had had a chance to lose. She herself, meeting him once at a costume ball of the Junior League, had been knocked silly by his dashing airs and Apollo curls, not to mention the best pair of calves she had ever beheld.
"So you see, my dear, an old woman can be quite as feeble-minded as a debutante. Nobody has ever had a monopoly of making mistakes."
Janet pointed out that the world did not take quite so liberal a view. This being so, might she not prove a source of embarrassment to Mrs. Jerome? As people looked at it, running away with a man was—
"Child, for every woman who runs away with a man, there's a man who runs away with a woman."
This obvious truth had been lost sight of, and the time had come for its emphatic reassertion. Did Janet imagine that Claude had lost any credit? Well, let her look at the facts. Mr. Fontaine, senior, had just got himself into a very bad mess, one that involved the Fontaine firm in a case of diamond smuggling. The Duchess had read her the story from the papers. And only last night Le Temps had reported that Mr. Fontaine was believed to have jumped his bail, leaving his son Claude behind to pull the firm out of the hole. And everybody felt so sorry for Claude! Not that he had anything to fear. He could not be held personally accountable. Still, there were the court proceedings, which were reckoned a terrible load for his handsome young shoulders to bear. And so bankers and clubmen and "sealskin" artists were rushing to his aid; matrons from upper Fifth Avenue were pulling wires; Colonel Armstrong, the great financier, was on the job behind the scenes; and it was freely whispered that when the storm had blown over, Claude and Marjorie Armstrong were to be married in St. Thomas'. Here was retribution! If you judged from the international tidal wave of sympathy and helpfulness that was sweeping towards Claude, you might be pardoned for thinking that he was Galahad, Parsifal, and Lohengrin rolled into one.
"But men stand by one another," added Mrs. Jerome, pointing the moral succinctly.
Women would have to take this lesson to heart and stand by one another just as men did. If Janet joined the Jerome forces, she could depend on one thing, and that was her support through thick and thin.
Janet felt inexcusably ungrateful at not accepting the managership on the spot, and frankly said so. She made no attempt to explain her indecision, her motives at the time being far from clear to herself.
Mrs. Jerome, blissfully unaware of the existence of Robert Lloyd as a factor in this hesitation, took it in very good part. Janet should make up her mind when she pleased. But surely, she wasn't again playing with the thought of marrying M. St. Hilaire? After her emphatic assertion that she didn't love him!
"Yet I don't dislike him, by any means," said Janet. "I was very fond of him in Brussels, before he lost his head."