“It means marriage.”
This was not so amusing.
“Who is she?”
“Nobody you ever saw.”
This was reassuring. Mrs. Winfield had never seen any girl in town quite good enough for her daughter-in-law.
Mrs. Winfield was very strict, and very religious in so far as religion is concerned with trying one’s neighbors as well as oneself by very lofty and very inelastic laws of conduct.
Bret dreaded to tell his mother who Sheila was or what she was. He knew her opinion of the stage and its people. She had not expressed it often because she winced even at the mention of hopelessly improper subjects like French literature, the theater, classic art, playing cards, the works of Herbert Spencer, Ouida, Huxley, and people like that.
She knew so little of the theater that when she made him tell her the girl’s name, “Sheila Kemble” meant nothing to her.
Mrs. Winfield demanded full information on the vital subject of her son’s fiancée. Bret dodged her cross-examination in vain. He dilated on Sheila’s beauty, her culture, her fascination, her devotion to him. But those were details; Mrs. Winfield wanted to know the important things:
“What church does she belong to?”