“A couple of painted Jezebels, that are enough to drag any family to perdition. The old woman, I hear, murders the king’s English and eats with her knife, but is a good soul. And if it wasn’t for the determined stand Anne Clavering has taken for her mother, I don’t imagine there is much doubt that Senator Clavering would have divorced her long ago. But Anne stands up for her mother and makes them all treat her properly, and is assisted by the brother,—a poor rag of a man, but perfectly respectable,—Reginald Clavering. Did you ever notice how common people run to high-flown names? None of our plain Johns and Georges and Marys and Susans and Jameses for them—they get their names, I think, out of Ouida’s novels.”
Richard Baskerville rose and stood in front of the fire. Mrs. Luttrell could not complain of any want of interest on his part in the subject under discussion. “Miss Clavering, as I told you, invited me to call on her, when I first met her. However, I had scruples about going to the house of a man I was fighting as I am fighting Senator Clavering. So I never went, and she never repeated the invitation. She is a very proud woman.”
“Very. And she is the only one of her class I have ever seen who was really a scientific fighter.”
“How pitiable it is, though, for a girl to have to fight her way through society.”
“Yes—but Anne Clavering does it, and does it gallantly. Nobody can be impertinent to her with impunity. Do you know, the first thing that made me like her was the way that she hit back when I gave her a gentle correction.”
“I am delighted to hear it, and I hope she whipped you well.”
“Not exactly—but she stood up before me long enough to make me respect her and ask her to come to one of my little Saturday dinners.”
“Mrs. Thorndyke is always asking her to dinner, and I know of no woman more discerning than Mrs. Thorndyke.”
“Yes, Constance Thorndyke knows a great deal. But you see her husband is in the Senate and so she has to have some sorts of people at her house that I don’t have. However, I know she is really a friend of Anne Clavering, and it is perfectly plain that although Miss Clavering is a nouveau riche herself, she hasn’t any overwhelming respect for her own ‘order,’ as Ouida would say. She is ten times more flattered to be entertained by people like the Thorndykes and myself than by the richest pork-packing or dry-goods family in Washington.”
“Certainly she is, as a woman of sense would be.”