RoBards noted that many of his old schoolmates, still boys in his eye, were far older than Patty had allowed him to be. And their wives were as shapeless as the haunches of meat whose slices they attacked without grace. Patty made a religion of little manners and charming affectations. She took off her gloves with caressing upward strokes and folded them under her napkin. She sipped her soup with a birdlike mincing that was beyond cavil.
And when Mr. Webster, with old-fashioned courtesy, challenged her to champagne, she accepted the challenge, selecting the wine he named, held her glass to be filled, and while the bubbles tumbled and foamed to the brim and broke over it in a tiny spray, she looked into the monstrous eyes of the modern Demosthenes, and with the silent eloquence of her smile, nullified the ponderous phrases he would have rolled upon her.
He found his voice later, but RoBards could hear Patty’s voice now and then, tinkling like raindrops between thunders. And finally he heard her murmur in little gasps:
“Oh, Mr. Senator!—if only you—you!—would take my father’s case—against this wicked, wicked city—then—justice would be done—at last—for once at least.”
A faintness, less of jealousy than despair, made RoBards put down his Madeira glass so sharply that a blotch of the wine darkened the linen of the cloth. He set the glass above the stain lest the hostess see him and want to murder him. And this blunder completed his misery.
But Patty stared up into Webster’s eyes as if she had never seen a man before.
By this time Mr. Webster was well toward the befuddlement for which he was noted, and his reply was more fervent than elegant:
“My dear, ’f you want my assisshance in your father’s—your father’s lawsuit, I shall consider it a prilivege, a glorious pril—op’tunity to pay homage to one of mos’ beau’iful wom’n, one of mos’ charming—Madam, I shallenge you to champ—champagne.”
Patty went through the rites again, but put her hand across the glass when the servant would have refilled it. She finished her dessert, and deftly resumed her gloves before the hostess threw down her napkin and rose to lead the ladies to the dressing room. Patty, for all her accepted challenges, was one of the few women who made the door without a waver.
Her husband followed her with his eyes and longed to go with her and unpack his heart of the grudge it held. In his very presence she had asked another lawyer to supply the ability she denied him. But he had to stay and watch with disgust the long tippling and prattling and male gossip.