The old woman looked at him with an expression of affectionate tolerance. “My dear boy,” she said quietly, “Margaret is wildly unhappy; money never yet purchased happiness; that’s the reason she behaves so outrageously. Have you heard of her latest? She danced a kind of highland fling or a jig after her dinner the other night. White was furious, and they’re telling a story of an open quarrel after the musicale when he swore at her and she laughed in his face.”
“White is a brute, but Margaret chose him with her eyes open,” he replied, “and I think Fox feels it. At any rate there’s nothing in that gossip about Wingfield; he had quarrelled with the President. You know the story is that he was found walking up and down his hall, the Wednesday after Congress met, shaking his fist and shouting about the message. ‘That damned message!’ he said, ‘it will ruin the party—if I’d only been here!’ He was away at the time it was written and, of course, that paragraph did virtually condemn his administration of the department. He had to resign; that goes without saying!”
“I suppose so, and Mrs. Wingfield talked; we all know what a tongue she has!”
Allestree laughed, leaning back in his chair with his hands clasped behind his head. “Well, she’s going, anyway.”
“But she isn’t,” sighed Mrs. Allestree; “she’s to stay over two months, heaven knows why!”
“The Lord deliver Margaret then!” exclaimed her son, still laughing.
Mrs. Allestree nodded sagely. “Margaret can hold her own though, Robert, and everybody knows how she has insulted Mrs. Wingfield. Margaret’s bon mots have convulsed the town time and again. You know, as well as I do, that it was Margaret who set half the stories going about her. Margaret can do and say the most shocking and heartless things at one moment and be the most charming creature at the next. She often seems to me to be a perfect Undine, to have no soul! Really, sometimes her treatment of White is impossible. Even Lily Osborne professes to be shocked at the dance the other night; she told Martha O’Neal that it was as suggestive as Salome.”
“Mrs. Osborne is a hypocrite,” retorted Allestree scornfully; “by the way, I’m to paint her portrait. I put it at a figure which, I thought, was prohibitive and precluded all possibility of an order, but she closed it at once, without turning an eyelash.”
Mrs. Allestree gave him a long, comprehending look. “White pays for it then,” she remarked dryly.
“Of course,” he replied, “and White pretends to quarrel with his wife’s wild ways!”