“Mabel!”
“Don’t look at me in that puritanical way!” cried Mabel, passionately. “What do you know about life? You scarcely ever saw father, and you didn’t love him anyhow. Besides, Americans are not so different from these Europeans when they have time enough. I got out of Bobby the other day that father kept a mistress for years, and small blame to him. You left him deliberately year after year and you would have had no excuse for righteous wrath had you known. But with us innocent young wives—it is a very different matter, with the world full of sirens like Margarethe Styr. And they are not all publicly branded, either. I could name a dozen that you are proud to know, that are barely gossiped about, who would take John off my hands in a moment if they had a chance at him, or he found them seductive. What has saved me so far is that he is odd, difficult to please, indolent, cold on the surface. But I can tell you that with a man like John Ordham matrimony is like American politics: the woman must know every trick of the game and be above employing none of them. It is horrible, but that makes it none the less true.”
“Mabel, you are outrageous! I’ll listen to no such blasphemy upon womanhood—American womanhood,” she added as an afterthought. “As for your father’s infidelity, it may be. I asked no questions, and I am not the fool you seem to think; but that is quite another matter from seeking to hold a man with the methods of the courtesan. Better let him go.”
“Not when you love him. I’d give my immortal soul, I’d trample in the slime all the girlhood innocence—”
“Mabel! At least be careful not to excite yourself.”
This admonition produced some effect; Mabel was silent for a few moments, and then resumed more calmly: “I am perfectly well aware that during the next few months I can do nothing but think and plan and try to cull wisdom from the masters that have put love under a microscope or on the dissecting table. I am sorry I have been sullen and looked as miserable as I felt. It was a mistake, as great a mistake as for us to refuse to meet Styr. We should have had her here morning, noon, and night. It is too late to alter that, and it is impossible for me to make myself charming when I look like a fright. But I am resolved to be hateful and woebegone no longer. I shall hereafter treat John exactly as if it were the most natural thing in the world for him to amuse himself while I am so dull. At least he shall not have the faintest excuse to leave me. This is the critical time. When that woman is far away—and I am told she is to sing next winter in New York—and I am well again, I’ll become a coquette, I’ll make a fine art of matrimony; I wouldn’t be too proud to take hints from the very women of the trottoir if I could get at them. But win and hold him I will. I am a woman, and my eyes are wide open.”
“Have you considered that you may be obliged to give up your cherished plan of living in England? I am convinced by the remarks he drops now and again that he is more set upon diplomacy than ever.”
“If I fail to keep him in England until he has lost his chances for the service—yes, I’ll go. There is no sacrifice I won’t make. I’ll watch him like a cat, and know whether to hold out on that point or give in. Besides, there is always the chance of his growing impatient at the slow promotion. No doubt there will be more than one disgusted moment in which I can induce him to resign and come home to politics. Oh! Oh! that I were well and beautiful once more!”
Mrs. Cutting sighed deeply. She felt as sad as shocked. It was as if she saw a little crystal castle of surpassing beauty, every facet scintillating with a thousand modulated shades of the primal colours, shivered at her feet. Why had she been in such haste to marry her exquisite child? Mabel would have remained girlishly beautiful until twenty-eight; for ten years longer she might have gloried in her handiwork. As she did not care to listen to any more of Mabel’s conclusions, she merely remarked:
“You will not look as young at forty as I do, if you let emotions shake you like this.”