“I probably shouldn’t have liked it,” said Charlotte dryly.
“Kingsnorth will snort when he hears that Mrs. Snodgrass asked us to dinner,” said Martin. “They don’t like each other,” he explained to his wife. “I can’t say I ever thought she liked me much till this trip. She thinks I’m likelier to be a respectable member of society, now I’m married. She thinks that because I was a soldier I went about sowing wild oats by the cavan.”
It happened that at the moment he finished the remark, Charlotte’s glance rested on Maclaughlin, whose face was fair in the moonlight. In a flash—in just the instant’s time that it took him to change his expression—she read the man’s judgment that Collingwood owed thanks to his wife for any civility received from Mrs. Snodgrass. A man brought up in the British empire has some sources of knowledge denied the citizens of our great republic. Thirty years of kicking over American frontiers had robbed the Scotchman of many a national trait. They had not obscured his firm fixed impressions of gentility. He knew Martin’s wife for a gentlewoman.
“How did you like Mrs. Snodgrass?” Martin asked his wife.
Charlotte cast about for something truthful and non-committal. “I thought she was very prettily dressed,” she replied, “and that she showed very good taste in her home. It was cosy, and the dinner was excellent.”
“Good heavens, Charlotte! I didn’t ask you that. I asked you how you liked her.”
“She told you,” said Maclaughlin with a short laugh.
“Of course I did,” echoed Charlotte. “I put it in the most forcible way I could. Don’t pretend you did not understand.”
“I understood well enough. I just wanted you to come out and out with what you mean. Why don’t you like her?”
“She is too commonplace and too assuming.”