Her eyes lit up suddenly, glowed.
"You looked splendid!"
"Splendid?"
He laughed, stretched out his hand to hers, deeply pleased.
"I can't express it, but with all that howling crowd, and the stones, yes, you were splendid! Both of you."
Carlin withdrew his hand abruptly, and Mary serenely went on with her sewing.
She was well aware that Carlin disliked Hilary Robertson, but as she considered that his dislike was without reason, she ignored it as much as possible. Carlin's flings at "the preacher," she was accustomed to receive in silence. She considered that Hilary needed no defence, his life spoke for him, he was blameless. She put Carlin's sneers down to his unregenerate nature, his habit of scoffing at religion, which now seemed ingrained. Never would she have admitted the possibility that Carlin might be jealous. That would have been too degrading, it would have reflected upon her, and she was serenely conscious that her conduct and feelings were blameless also. She had tried to explain to him the nature of her admiration for Hilary, but he couldn't or wouldn't understand it. He had a wrong attitude toward it, and toward her church activities and charitable work. Most men, she thought, liked to have their wives religious, but Laurence would have preferred frivolity on her part. He was very fond of pleasure; he insisted on keeping wine in the house, and on taking her to Chicago for the evening on the rare occasions when she could get away. Mary felt that she yielded a good deal, perhaps more than she ought, to Laurence's light tendencies; but then, also, it was a wife's duty to yield, whenever she could consistently with higher duties. So she had a submissive attitude—except when some question of "right" came up.
In reality she ruled the house, and the Judge and Carlin, and the babies and the Swedish servant, with an iron hand. An exact order prevailed in the household, a definite routine for each day. Mary had her ideas about how a family should be managed, and she worked hard to carry them out, and made other people work too. She had a manner now of quiet authority. She did not scold, nor raise her voice when displeased; but visited the transgressor with an awful silence and with icy glances. Outside the house she seldom interfered with the doings of her husband or Judge Baxter. "Business" was the man's province, and she did not enquire, as a rule, into its details. And in her own province she did not expect to be interfered with.
The Judge and Carlin submitted meekly to her rules—refrained from smoking in certain rooms, were prompt at meals, careful about the sort of men they brought to the house, did not indulge in unseemly levity of conversation. The Judge had almost conquered a lifelong habit of profanity. He had a complete fealty to Mary, was touchingly pleased to be ruled by her. He was afraid of her, and often felt like a small boy in her presence. He despised her intellect, as he did that of all women. This contempt existed side by side in his mind with admiration and involuntary awe, and the conjunction never troubled him. He would have said that he admired women but didn't respect them. More difficult to overcome than swearing was his habit of cynical speech about the sex. It broke out now and then in Mary's presence, revealing his deep conviction that women (though angelic no doubt) were hardly human, but of a distinctly inferior species. Mary never troubled to defend her sex. She would merely look at the Judge with a calm, slightly ironical gaze, under which he sometimes blushed.