Mr. Dalken gasped in sheer unbelief. “Do you mean to say you knew those two men? Did you know they were divorced by their wives for their disreputable living?”
“How silly you are! Reputations are nothing in these liberal times, because divorce is so convenient. Those two men have money and the most charming personalities. That is why their wives can’t live with them—they are generally so shabby looking and are fiercely jealous of the attentions paid their husbands by appreciative women. Naturally, men like Henri or James are too popular for their fogy wives, hence the divorces, you know!”
“Why, Elizabeth, you are positively shocking! I cannot believe you are not yet twenty and my own child! Where have you acquired all this nightmare of experience in such things?” Mr. Dalken’s voice trembled with emotion over the girl’s short-comings.
“Really, father, one might think you were a saint, from the way you are trying to preach to me!” sneered Elizabeth.
“Far be it from me to pose as a saint, but at least I know I am a clean-minded man, and I demand that my daughter act as a young lady should, while she is in my charge,” was Mr. Dalken’s stern reply.
“I suppose you would invite me to model my behavior after such country clods as Miss Brewster, or take for my example such flippant nobodies as Eleanor Maynard from Chicago?” scorned Elizabeth, tossing her head. “Why, I knew them both at school in New York, and I must say that not a girl in society would deign to cast a glance at either of them now. They are absolutely too impossible to stand on any rung of the social ladder, and not even the commonest plane of society in New York would consider them.”
“I am ashamed to hear you say so. It goes to prove how low the social standard has fallen. In fact, I may add, that the standard of a once decent period must have been dragged through the mire, of late times, to present such views as you entertain as its highest aspirations.” Mr. Dalken’s words were cutting and Elizabeth resented them.
“Well, I am sorry to remind you, sir, that men who can shamelessly turn their backs upon the obligations of a wife and daughter and go after such women as you prefer to call your friends, are the very ones who smirch society’s fair standard and then stand up and denounce it as having fallen.”
Sheer astonishment and shocked soul of Mr. Dalken kept him silent after Elizabeth concluded her statement. Finding he failed to reply, she added sarcastically:
“If my dear mother but knew the type of woman she might have to call her successor to such marital felicity as you deprived her of when she called herself Mrs. Dalken, she would not concern herself to save you from such a degradation!”