“Well,” Paul said, “suppose he does?”
It did not matter to him personally whether Jack came or not, and he could not quite understand Clarice’s aversion to having him present at her bridal. It would be very annoying, of course, if he were intoxicated and noisy, but he did not believe he would be. He was naturally a gentleman. He could surely keep sober for one day, and he said so to Clarice.
“You don’t know him as he is now,” she said. “It takes so little to make him perfectly wild, and I should die of mortification. I think he did enough when he gambled away the money I entrusted to him without disgracing me more. It makes mamma quite ill to think of having him here. She says she positively cannot, and I wish you’d write and tell him not to come. No, not exactly that, perhaps, but make as if we didn’t expect him, he is so far away and all that. You can do it nicely.”
Paul didn’t think he could, or would. Jack was sure to see through a ruse of that sort, and he did not want to hurt his feelings. “Let him alone and he will stay where he is,” he said. “Poke him up and he’s sure to come.”
This reasoning did not please Clarice, who had more on her mind.
“If Elithe had minded her business he would have known nothing about it,” she said.
“What has Elithe to do with it?” Paul asked in some surprise, and Clarice replied, “Wrote home about the grand wedding which she and her aunt were to attend. How did she know she would be invited?”
“She knew her aunt was to be, and naturally thought she would not be left out,” Paul answered.
“Which she will! I’ve made up my mind to that! It isn’t necessary to ask a whole family. One member is enough,” Clarice said so viciously that Paul stopped short in his walk and looked at her.
“Do you mean what you say?” he asked, and Clarice replied, “Yes, I do mean it! I don’t like the girl, with her pussy cat ways. I’ve never liked her, and you’ve made such a fuss over her ever since she came. Calling there every day, I hear, teaching her to swim, and bringing her to the tennis court. You’ll be wanting her to join next, but I’ll black-ball her,—see if I don’t.”