"Pooh!" she ejaculated, cheerfully. "For my part, I think you're well rid of them."
"But you don't understand," Cicily almost moaned. "It's him—him! I've ruined him, I tell you."
This time, Mrs. Delancy understood the pronoun, but she understood nothing beyond that.
"Ruined him?" she repeated, wholly at a loss. "Whom have you ruined, Cicily? What do you mean?"
Then, the young wife poured forth the tale of the disaster she had all unwittingly wrought in the affairs of her husband. She explained her high hopes of saving a dangerous situation by means of her own influence over the women, who, in turn, controlled the leaders among the workmen in the factory. Cicily was painfully aware of the mischief that must result from the refusal of the Civitas Society to welcome into its sacred circle the three candidates whom she had proposed. She knew the sensitiveness of these women, knew that they would bitterly resent the slight thus put upon them. Where she had meant to bind their friendship for her, she had succeeded only in creating a situation by which they might well come to detest her for having subjected them to needless humiliation. With their hostility aroused against her, they would throw their influence, which she believed dominant, to persuade the men against any concessions in favor of their employer. With a full perception of the catastrophe in which she had so innocently become involved, the wife hurriedly recounted the facts to her aunt, bewailing the evil destiny that had worked such dire havoc with her schemes for good.
"Well, you did what you could," Mrs. Delancy suggested consolingly, when at last the melancholy recital was ended.
"And I failed!" came the retort, in a voice of misery.
Certain utterances of the girl on a former occasion had rankled in the bosom of the old lady, perhaps because she perceived a certain element of justice in them, and by so much a measure of dereliction on her own part in the regulating of affairs between herself and her husband. Now, despite the kindliness of her nature and her real sympathy for the suffering of the niece who knelt at her knees, she could not forbear a mild reproof:
"Well, Cicily," she said gently, "it all comes of a woman fooling with business. Why, if you'd only been content to work for the heathen—"
"I've just finished with the heathen!" was the quick interruption.