A foreground not even shared by Amanthus, but filled altogether by Mrs. Harrison, beautiful, smiling, and serene, too big, too adequate, too honest and too real to put forward one charm, one attribute deliberately to invite such recognition.
Too big, too honest and too real? Selina caught at the words as they passed through her mind. Could the secret lie in these? Auntie had deplored the borrowed furbelows with deep distress. Were she and her group paying the penalty of trying to be what they were not?
These young gentlemen whose good opinions the group yearned to possess, bantered them instead with jocularity, and gave sincerity and admiration to Mrs. Harrison. If Selina could judge, it was the same nature of homage men offered to Miss Pocahontas Boswell, that most natural and unassuming of persons.
Had Selina laid bare the secret? For was not Mrs. Harrison nobly and simply herself? Each charm and each loveliness taking its toll rightfully her own? And her interests and her occupations and her reading, her assumptions and her opinions, were not these too gently and quietly her own?
She had faced about from the tea-table now, her own cup in hand and was speaking. How lovely her fair hair was, how pleasing the apricot tones of her dress! And Mamma and Auntie said there was no degradation a husband might descend to that her money was not taken to pay for, no price a humiliated young wife could be taxed, her personal fortune did not stand voucher for! Why should a woman permit it? Why not consider her own to be her own, in such a case? Selina, looking at Mrs. Harrison, wondered.
She herself was speaking. "And now about old colored Aunt Hosanna in my kitchen. She has a lazy, ne'er-do-well husband, girls, though I've probably mentioned it before to you, who as regularly as the week-end rolls around, appears and collects her week's wages for her. I have asked to be assured by these young lawyers-to-be, that he has every right to do it, before I give in to him any longer."
"He has every right," from Mr. Welling, square-set now like his spectacles, and earnest and definite. "The common law, covering the law of husband and wife, has been modified in some of the states, but here in our own, is practically unchanged."
"Culpepper," from Mrs. Harrison still playing with her tea-cup, to this black-haired, blue-eyed young gentleman in a chair to her left, "you promised to look up the case of that little dressmaker for me. Don't think I hunt these things. By some force of attraction seemingly, they seek me."
Culpepper took advantage of the opportunity to put his cup down. Its undiminished contents would indicate that he didn't care for tea as a beverage either. He, too, was business-like and definite.
"I took the address you gave me," he said, "and went around to see her carpenter husband. She's temporarily left him since you saw her. He admits the house was bought and paid for by her out of her earnings before he knew her. And he admits he mistreats her every time he's drunk. But the house and its contents he proposes to keep if she leaves him."