“But I don’t like them!” pleaded Audrey. “I don’t like the way they behave to me. They think, because I am engaged in business, trade in fact, that they can use my house as they please, and treat me as they please.”
“Scarcely that, Madame. You know nobody would dare to treat you in any but the right way in my presence,” said Mr. Candover, growing more earnest as he bent to speak low in her ear.
Audrey frowned, finding a difficulty in defining her grievance.
“Of course, they’re not openly insulting, I don’t mean that. But—there’s a subtle difference. Oh, you’re a man, why do you pretend not to know between the civility with which a man of this sort treats the women of his own set, and the manner he uses to women whom he looks upon as—as not belonging to his world?”
“Look here, Madame, you must lay aside some of these fine feelings, or you must lay aside the hope of getting on in business. If you like, instead of the men of the Carlton, the Beefsteak and the Jockey Club, I’ll bring down next time the members of the Athenæum, including the whole bench of bishops. They won’t play cards, they won’t pay compliments, but they’ll all be too deaf to answer what you say to them, and they won’t buy so much as a bonnet,” retorted Mr. Candover, impatiently.
“Very well,” said Audrey, with spirit, “please bring the bishops next Wednesday.”
But when next Wednesday came the bishops did not appear, and the same set as before dropped in one by one. With this difference, that one or two more ladies came.
Audrey, however, liked the members of her own sex still less than she did those of the other who were her guests, and told Mr. Candover so.
But one of the ladies had a beautiful voice, and her husband accompanied her on the piano. Audrey herself played well, and to her great relief the card-tables did not, on this occasion, make their appearance in the drawing-room, where songs from the musical comedies, piquantly rendered, formed the evening’s entertainment.
But there was a fine smoking-room with a vaulted ceiling at the other end of the house, where most of the gentlemen spent the evening.