“Does all that mean you will not receive Countess Tann?” He stood up, looking appealingly at his mother-in-law, whom he liked better for sticking to her little guns, inconvenient as they were to himself. He drew his arms together, after his fashion when nervous. “Are you really unrelenting? Will you not call on Countess Tann, and ask her to come here? I shall feel very awkward if you do not. My mother has promised to be nice to her, but I am not living in her house.”
“Do, mother,” whispered Mabel.
But on this point Mrs. Cutting was pure steel, although she found it no easy matter to resist Ordham when he deigned to coax. “No—I am desperately sorry, but I cannot. You must not ask it of me. If I forced myself to take that woman by the hand, I should lose my self-control and be rude to her. But, indeed, to touch her would be a physical as well as a moral impossibility. I am very sorry. I hate to deny you anything.”
She swept out of the room hastily, and Mabel looked apprehensively at her husband, who, for the fourth time, was striking a match with his back to her.
“Jackie!”
Jackie gritted his teeth, but answered politely, “Well, Mabel?”
“Are you angry with me? It is too severe of mother.”
“Of course not. How can you say such a thing?”
“Well, you have a right to be. But perhaps I can talk mother over.”
“I am sure you cannot. But it doesn’t matter. I fancy Countess Tann will understand—she is an American! Besides, no doubt we have wasted a lot of talk and temper over nothing. She will be much too busy for society. Your mother might have sacrificed her principles by leaving a card. A Wagner prima donna who is to sing eighteen times in five weeks, besides rehearsing with a scratch company, would no doubt herself spare you the indignity of meeting a woman who not only has been as much gossiped about as some eight or ten that were here to-day, but who hails from the ranks—”