Honora wrote hastily, by the moonlight, as she was bid, “Annette and I are waiting for you,” and John took the card.
“Why doesn't he go to this door?” she asked, seeing the man disappear around a corner of the house.
“You child!” said her friend compassionately; “are you so innocent as to suppose that any one can walk into one of those places when he pleases? These charming réunions are held with locked doors, and one has to have the password to go in.”
Honora was silent with indignation. To her mind, Lawrence could not do his wife a greater injury than in allowing her to become acquainted with such places, and she was half disposed to be vexed with Annette for not leaving him to himself, and refusing to be drawn into any objectionable scenes and associations.
Annette divined the last thought, and replied to it.
“It is impossible for a wife to be scrupulous as to the means by which she shall withdraw her husband from danger,” she said with quiet coldness. “They are one. If he is soiled, she cannot be quite clean, except in intention, unless she is very selfish; and then her intention is not good, which is worse yet. Of course she should be careful not to draw others into her affairs.”
“You must know far better than I, Annette,” her friend said quickly, feeling as though she must have spoken her thought. “At all events, you cannot be called selfish. And, indeed, if the angels of heaven were over-scrupulous with regard to their associations, we should lack their guardianship.”
Here John appeared, walking briskly round the corner of the hotel, and immediately after Lawrence Gerald came to the carriage-door.
“You here, Honora!” he exclaimed. “What could have induced you?”
“We had better not ask each other questions,” she replied coldly. “It is late. Will you come home with us?”