Mrs. Cutting flushed. “They go everywhere,” she said tartly. “Nevertheless, I have received them only to please your mother; it has been under protest, even although nothing against them is proved. In time I shall tactfully weed them out.”
“There are no proofs against Countess Tann.”
“I am afraid proofs could easily be had. You were in the next room only this afternoon when Mr. Levering entertained a group of us, not for the first time, with reminiscences of Margaret Hill. That, he asserts, is her real name, and he not only saw her year in and out in New York, but knew her personally.”
“Levering is one of those rheumatic old beaux that sit in club windows and manufacture scandal. There is no wheat in his chaff. And what a cur to run about prejudicing people against a woman who has no man to defend her, a woman so great, for that matter, that it is a presumption to gossip about her at all! I shall cut him.”
“Dear me, I had no idea you could bring yourself to do anything so direct and undiplomatic!” Mrs. Cutting laughed, but she was growing angry. “And do remember that he is not only a very old friend of mine, but a power even here in London, where he has come every season for twenty years.”
“I have nothing to fear from Levering,” replied Ordham, coldly. “He is not even a second-rate Englishman, and these transplanted American men that have nothing better to do than invent or peddle racy gossip in order to make sure of being asked every night to meet a title or two at dinner are not taken very seriously by us.”
Mrs. Cutting made no reply for a moment. She realized that her son-in-law rude must be very much in earnest. Her American soul rose in wrath, but she kept Mabel’s happiness steadily before her, and finally said, in her usual calm even tones: “I am afraid it is all true. We won’t discuss poor old Levering. I have heard of Styr from other sources, and although it distresses me greatly to refuse you anything you wish, I fear I cannot receive her under my roof.”
“Granting that these stories are true, what difference does it make?” No tones could be more even, more mellifluous, than Ordham’s. “She is a great artist, many hold the greatest living. Shall we be more provincial than Munich, which receives the artist with no reference to what she may have been ten years ago, on the other side of the globe?”
“Why should artists be treated as if they were different from ordinary mortals?”
“Because they are.”