“Think it over. I have an idea that presently it will occur to you that you never gave the boy a chance. I’m not sure whether you don’t owe him a good deal of reparation; anyhow, you can’t undo the marriage, and it’s just possible it may be the saving of him.”
“You’re not going to ask me to receive an actress as my daughter-in-law?”
“Fiddledidee! She’ll make your son a much better wife than a duchess.”
When Mrs. Barlow-Bassett showed her friend Reggie’s letter. Miss Ley carefully noted the address, and next day, in the afternoon, proceeded to call upon the new-married couple. They lived in a somewhat shabby lodging-house in the Vauxhall Bridge Road—that long, sordid street—and Miss Ley was shown into an attic which served as sitting-room. It was barely fitted with tawdry furniture, much the worse for wear, but to give a homelike air photographs were pinned on the wall, each with a sprawling flourish for a signature, of persons connected with the stage, but unknown to fame. When Miss Ley entered, Reggie, dressed in a suit of somewhat pronounced pattern, with a Homburg tweed hat on his head, was reading the Era, while his wife stood in front of the glass doing her hair. Notwithstanding the late hour, she still wore a dressing-gown of red satin, covered with inexpensive lace, which was certainly neither very new nor very clean. Miss Ley’s appearance caused some embarrassment, and it was not without awkwardness that Reggie made the necessary introduction.
“Excuse me being in such a state,” said Mrs. Reggie, gathering up her hairpins, “but I was just going to dress.”
She was a little woman, plainly older than her husband, and to Miss Ley’s astonishment, by no means pretty; her eyes were handsome, used with full knowledge of their power, and her black hair very fine; but chiefly noticeable was a singular determination of manner, a shrewishness about the mouth, which suggested that if she did not get her own way someone would suffer. She looked rather suspiciously at Miss Ley, but treated her with sufficient cordiality to indicate a readiness to be friendly if the visitor did not prove hostile.
“I only heard you were married yesterday,” Miss Ley hastened to say as affably as possible, “and I was anxious to make your wife’s acquaintance, Reggie.”
“You’ve not come from the mater?” he asked.
“No.”
“I suppose she’s in a hell of a wax.”