He knew why she was sparring; he knew that to disappoint a woman in the vanity of her clothes is more immediately dangerous than to treat her with deliberate insult or cruelty, but he was exacerbated by her unfair onslaught on Robert, and he was sore at the attitude taken toward him by his family. Robert had done his best, but the rest were implacable; they would not admit his right to his own actions independent of their opinion. Not content with holding their opinion, they communicated it to him in the most injurious letters, written at intervals most nicely calculated for his annoyance. To a philosopher in search of tolerance and an open mind all this had been ruffling.
The quarrel blew over. Matilda dried away her tears, and he begged her pardon and promised to give her another evening dress finer even than that, made at a real, smart, fashionable, expensive dressmaker’s. . . . Shyly and diffidently they entered a famous house in Albemarle Street and were told that without an introduction the firm could not make for madam. A splendid cocotte in glorious raiment swept by them and out into the street. She had a little spaniel in her arms and a silver-gray motorcar was awaiting her. Into this she mounted and was whirled away. With something of both contempt and envy the stately young woman who had received them gazed after this vision of wealth and insolence. Old Mole and Matilda felt very small and crept away.
Old Mole said:
“The wealth of London is amazing. A man would need at least ten thousand a year to amuse himself with a woman like that.”
Matilda said:
“A creature like that!”
And a little later she said:
“I think I’ll wait for my dress.”
However, she had not to wait, for Old Mole gave the story to Robert, who, with a nice sense of the fitness of things, told his sister that he wished to buy a dress for a friend of his, and, armed with her introduction, he and Matilda went and ordered a gown at an establishment even more exclusive than that in Albemarle Street. This establishment was so select that only the most indubitably married or otherwise guaranteed ladies were served; one there obtained the French style without the suspicion of French Frenchness.
The quarrel blew over, but the sensibilities of both were rasped, and they were cautious and wary with one another, which is perhaps the greatest trial of the blessed state of matrimony. He labored to be just to her, to endeavor to understand her. She was, he confessed, in a difficult position, lifted above her kind—though it was inconceivable that she could ever have met the fate or assumed the condition of her sister, Mrs. Boothroyd—and not adopted into his. He was self-outlawed, driven out of the common mind of his class, and, so far as he could see, of his country, into his own, and therein he had as yet discovered no habitation, not even a site whereon to build. She could not share his adventures and sorrows, and, except himself and Robert, had no companionship. He asked her if she had no acquaintance in London, and she confessed to the “second girl,” Milly Dufresne. He proposed that she should ask Miss Dufresne to dinner to provide the occasion for the wearing of her new gown. She said she did not suppose he would care for Miss Dufresne, but he protested that her friends were of course his and he was only too delighted that she had a companion of her own sex and age.