Lucy tried to smile; she brought forward her softest easy-chair with obsequious attention. She had something to make up to Raymond’s mother. “I hope nothing has happened,” she said.
“I will not sit down, I am much obliged to you. No, nothing has happened, so far as I know. It is about yourself I wanted to speak. Miss Trevor, you afforded a spectacle to my party yesterday which I hope never to see repeated again. I warned you the other night that you were flirting—”
Lucy’s countenance, which had been full of alarm, cleared a little, she even permitted herself to smile. “Flirting?” she said.
“I don’t think it a smiling matter. You have no mother,” said Mrs. Rushton, “and we are all sorry for you—in a measure, we are all very sorry for you. We know what the manner of fashionable circles are, at least of some fashionable circles. I have always said that to put you, with your antecedents, into the hands of a woman like Lady Randolph! But I have nothing to do with that, I wash my hands of that. The thing is that it will not do here.”
Lucy said nothing. She looked at her new tormentor wistfully, begging for mercy. What had she done?
“Yesterday opened my eyes,” said Mrs. Rushton, with a heat and energy which flushed her cheeks. “I have been trying to think you were all a nice girl should be. I have been thinking of you,” said the angry woman, with some sudden natural tears, “as one of my own. Heaven knows that is what has been in my mind. A poor orphan, though she is so rich, that is what I have always said to myself—poor thing! I will try to be a mother to her.”
“Oh, Mrs. Rushton, you have been very kind. I know it seems ungrateful,” cried Lucy, with answering tears of penitence, “but if you will only think—what was I to do?— I don’t want to marry any one. And Mr. Raymond is— I had never thought—”
There was a momentary pause. Mrs. Rushton had a struggle with herself. Nature had sent her here in Raymond’s quarrel, eager to avenge him somehow, and her mind was torn with the desire to take his part openly, to declare herself on her boy’s side, to overthrow and punish the girl who had slighted him. But pride and prudence came, though tardily, to her assistance here. She stared at Lucy for a moment with the blank look which so often veils a supreme conflict. Then she said, with an air of surprise, “Raymond? Do you mean my son? I can not see what he has to do with the question.”
Lucy felt as a half-fainting patient feels when the traditionary glass of cold water is dashed in her face. She came to herself with a little gasp of astonishment. What was it then? except in the matter of refusing Ray, her conscience was void of all offense. She looked at Mrs. Rushton with wonder in her wide open eyes.
“I do not know,” Mrs. Rushton continued, finding her ground more secure as she went on, “what you mean to insinuate about my boy. He is not one that will ever lead a girl too far. No, Lucy, that is a thing that will never happen. It is when one of your own town set appears that you show yourself in your true colors; but perhaps it is not your fault, perhaps Lady Randolph thinks that quite the right sort of behavior. I never attempt to fathom the conduct of women of her class.”