"Come not between the lion and his wrath or the tigress and her work," she said, torn this way and that between the comedy and the tragedy of the situation.
To get rid of him, she had at length made an appointment for the afternoon.
The appointment was never kept!
The sequel proved that her encounter with Claude had been observed. That night the bloodhounds of scandal were unleashed in the Susan Anthony House. The ring-leader was the thin-edged woman with the horn-rimmed spectacles.
This precious female was the mother of a whining little boy whose father was authenticated by due process of law. The law had not sufficed, however, to keep the gentleman faithful for long to the nuptial vows. After his disappearance from New York, his wife was left to support herself and to wreak vengeance where vengeance was not due.
The first that Janet knew about the coming storm was when the dietitian took her aside and told her that the house had been divided into two camps: for and against Janet; or, as the anti-Janet crowd put it: for and against Morality.
Two days before the nightmare, things had come to a head. In the absence of the manager, the anti-Janet faction had assembled under the chairmanship of the thin-edged agitator.
This lady had opened the meeting with the bitter announcement that those present were liberal and fairminded, but that they had their children to think of. Their darling children! Mothers, married mothers, mind you (and she, for her part, had consented to join the Susan B. Anthony House only on the confident assumption that all the mothers were as regularly married as herself)—mothers, as such, could afford to take no chances! Unhappily, she was persuaded that in the other camp there were ladies who had more than one good reason for standing by the manager. She surmised that some of these ladies were unmarried mothers! Scarcely mothers at all (if morals counted for anything), and certainly no better than they should be.
After much nursing of self-righteousness, suitable resolutions were moved, and a deputation was appointed to present the facts to Mrs. R. H. L. Jerome; also to demand the discharge of Janet and the vindication of American morality.
The great impeachment had occurred last night. Mrs. Jerome had motored into town, and both factions had turned out for the occasion in the large reception room on the ground floor. Mrs. Jerome had refused to start the proceedings until Janet was seated at her right hand. This settled, the thin-edged spokesman had made the formal charges.