“I go to-morrow.”
René was overwhelmed with the grubby shrunk feeling. It seemed so easy for these people to mount the high horse of their social superiority.
“Will you kindly tell your aunt that we are expecting her to dinner the day after to-morrow?”
With that Mr. Bentley rolled in at the garden gate (he was a fat little man) and closed it, though he knew that René’s way lay through the garden.
Raging, the young man walked the necessitated extra mile, infuriated and chilled by two questions: Had Cathleen removed the bracken from her hair? and Was that meeting by the gate accident or design?
. . . . . .
That night he asked his Aunt Janet about his father. She dodged his inquiries, and he could get nothing from her but this:
“I admire your mother more than I can say. She married a bad Fourmy, and that’s as bad as you can get. Poor, too. I was glad when that little money came to her.”
He gave her Mr. Bentley’s message, and she said: