“I ask you, after her conduct at the Brodericks’, to tell her she cannot come here, not at this time!”
“Yes; I see; it’s to punish her for not being good.”
“She asked me for a loan of money; I had hoped to spare you that, but you force me to tell you in my own defense.”
“Do you know,” she replied with the most delicate shading of insolence in tone and manner, “that I had never understood before the geographical difference between Boston and Pittsburg? It seems that I can be your wife here, but that I am not quite equal to that lofty station among the élite of Boston. It’s a little hard on Pittsburg, isn’t it?”
“You are outrageous—and unreasonable! I had never understood that you were so devoted to your mother—I had thought you superior to her; and now you take a stand with her as against me. It grieves me to be obliged to say to my own wife that I am disappointed in her. Bring your mother here if you like; humiliate me in my house if you want to! I shall have nothing more to say in the matter.”
He rose and struck the table sharply, glowering down at her.
“If that is quite all,” she said sweetly, “I will tell you something. What you have said to me about my mother is not what I expected from you. I know her far better than you do; and now that you have discussed the matter so frankly on your side—how absurd that we should have taken sides!—I will be frank, too, and tell you that one of the reasons for which I married you was to escape from her. I thought, from your showing of respect and affection for me, that I should find in Colonel Craighill a champion and a friend if not quite the ideal lover. And now at the first sign of trouble, at the first opportunity you had to prove my confidence and faith, you not only threw me aside to avoid showing me to your critical acquaintances, but you would wound me by flinging at me my mother—my mother who has never been anything but hateful to me—who would have made traffic of me and sunk me low for her own ends.”
The last words came from her slowly; tears were in her eyes as she rose to her full height and faced him.
“And now,” she ended, “I will say to you that my mother will not trouble you; that she will not”—and Walsh’s words came back to her and she felt secure and comforted as she remembered him—“she will not now, or at any other time, honour this house with her presence.”