“Rex, have you driven me wholly from your heart?”
“No; that would be impossible. Winifred would not wish it, callous as you were to her.”
“Do not be too hard on me. I am sore wounded. It is a great deal for a woman to be cast into the outer darkness.”
“Nonsense, mother, you are emerging into light. If your friends are so ready to drop you because you are poor—with the exceeding poverty of twenty-five hundred a year—of what value were they as friends? When you know Winifred you will be glad. You will feel as Dante felt when he emerged from the Inferno.”
“So you are determined to marry her?”
“Unquestionably. And mark you, mother, when the clouds pass, and we are rich again, you will be proud of your daughter-in-law. She will bear all your skill in dressing. Gad! how the women of your set will envy her complexion.”
Mrs. Carshaw smiled wanly at that. She knew her “set,” as Rex termed the Four Hundred.
“Why is she called Bartlett?” she inquired after a pause, and Rex looked at her in surprise. “I have a reason,” she continued. “Is that her real name?”
“Now,” he cried, “I admit you are showing some of your wonted cleverness.”