“Perfectly willing!” Littlemore returned. “I’ve nothing to do with saving others. All I’ve got to do is not to marry her myself.”
“Don’t you think then we’ve any responsibilities, any duties to society?”
“I don’t know what you mean. Society can look after itself. If she can bring it off she’s welcome. It’s a splendid sight in its way.”
“How do you mean splendid?”
“Why she has run up the tree as if she were a squirrel!”
“It’s very true she has an assurance à toute épreuve. But English society has become scandalously easy. I never saw anything like the people who are taken up. Mrs. Headway has had only to appear to succeed. If they can only make out big enough spots in you they’ll find you attractive. It’s like the decadence of the Roman Empire. You can see to look at this person that she’s not a lady. She’s pretty, very pretty, but she might be a dissipated dressmaker. She wouldn’t go down for a minute in New York. I’ve seen her three times—she apparently goes everywhere. I didn’t speak of her—I was wanting to see what you’d do. I judged you meant to do nothing, then this letter decided me. It’s written on purpose to be shown you; it’s what the poor lady—such a nice woman herself—wants you to do. She wrote to me before I came to town, and I went to see her as soon as I arrived. I think it very important. I told her that if she’d draw up a little statement I’d put it before you as soon as we should get settled. She’s in real distress. I think you ought to feel for her. You ought to communicate the facts exactly as they stand. A woman has no right to do such things as Mrs. Headway and come and ask to be accepted. She may make it up with her conscience, but she can’t make it up with society. Last night at Lady Dovedale’s I was afraid she’d know who I was and get somehow at me. I believe she’d really have been capable of it, and I got so frightened I went away. If Sir Arthur wishes to marry her for what she is, of course he’s welcome. But at least he ought to know.”
Mrs. Dolphin was neither agitated nor voluble; she moved from point to point with the temper and method of a person accustomed to preside at committees and to direct them. She deeply desired, however, that Mrs. Headway’s triumphant career should be checked; such a person had sufficiently abused a tolerance already so overstrained. Herself a party to an international marriage, Mrs. Dolphin naturally desired the class to which she belonged to close its ranks and carry its standard high.
“It seems to me she’s quite as good as the poor young man himself,” said Littlemore, lighting another cigar.
“As good? What do you mean by ‘good’? No one has ever breathed a word against him.”
“Very likely. But he’s a nonentity of the first water, and she at least a positive quantity, not to say a positive force. She’s a person, and a very clever one. Besides, she’s quite as good as the women lots of them have married. It’s new to me that your alliances have been always so august.”