The old woman set down her teacup and looked mournfully into the fire. “It’s a terrible business from beginning to end,” she said finally; “when I think of those two poor babies! Little Estelle is just beginning to notice things too, and Margaret seems utterly indifferent to them. What is the world coming to?”
Allestree laughed and patted his mother’s hand. “You can’t regulate it, mother,” he said cheerfully.
“Heaven forbid! There are too many divorces; one can’t go out now without meeting men with two wives and women with a plurality of husbands; yet we are objecting to seating the Mormons in Congress!”
“After all, is a divorce worse than such a marriage as Margaret’s?” her son rejoined, indolently enjoying the controversy.
“There should have been no marriage,” she retorted firmly, pushing back her chair and rising with a rustle of silks, “White could never have loved her, he hasn’t been true to her for a moment. Her beauty pleased him, or that charm which is more subtle than beauty and which makes her what she is. Now he’s lost his head over the gorgeous coloring, the flesh and blood of Lily Osborne; she would have pleased Rubens, Robert. By the way, Martha O’Neal told me of a curious rumor about her; it is said that she is in the secret employ of the Russian Government; you know she has no conscience.”
“A spy?” Allestree laughed, “but why here? We’ve done Russia a good turn, it’s Japan that is chewing the rag.”
“Robert! what a disgusting expression. But of course you know the tales of the Black Cabinet and that our embassy dispatches were tampered with.”
“Now you’re in your element, mother; you love a mystery!”
The old woman put her hand on his head, stroking back his hair with a fond gesture. “Tell me about Rose,” she said, watching him narrowly, with all her maternal intuition alive; “did she sit patiently—and will your portrait please you? That’s really the only question; every one else is sure to be pleased.”
He shook his head. “I can’t get it to please me,” he replied quietly; “after all, Rose’s beauty is less a question of feature than I thought. I might interpret a soul if I were a Raphael or a Fra Angelico—as it is, it will never look like her.”