“Mama!” said the girl who had been standing by, uneasily listening. “Mama dear——”
Her voice was soft and sweet, a placating woman’s voice. And as she drew nearer to them, her figure seeming to float over the shining parquet in its pale spread of gauzy draperies, her tone, her face, and her bearing were instinct with a pleading, feminine desire to soothe.
“Keep quiet, Cornie,” said her mother, “you’re not in this”—turning to Dominick. “And so your wife sent you up here to beg for an invitation? She’s got you under her thumb to that extent? Well, go back to her and tell her that she can send you forty times and you’ll not get it. She can make you crawl here and you’ll not get it—not while this is my house. When I’m dead you can do what you like.”
She turned away from him, her face dark with stirred blood, her body quivering. Anger was not the only passion that shook her. Deeper than this went outraged pride, love turned to gall, impotent fury that the woman her son had married had power over him so to reduce his pride and humble his manhood—her only son, the joy and glory of her old age, her Benjamin.
He looked after her, uncertain, frowning, desperate.
“It’s not right,” he protested. “It’s not fair. You’re unjust to her and to me.”
The old woman moved across the room to the corner where she had been standing when he entered. She did not turn, and he continued:
“You’re asking people to this ball that you hardly know. Everybody in San Francisco’s going. What harm has Berny done that you should leave her out this way?”
“I don’t want women with that kind of record in my house. I don’t ask decent people here to meet that sort,” said his mother over her shoulder.
He gave a suppressed exclamation, the meaning of which it was difficult to read, then said,