"What is my plan?" inquired Bromfield Corey.
"A dinner."
Her husband began to laugh. "Ah, you overdid the accusing-spirit business, and this is reparation." But Mrs. Corey hurried on, with combined dignity and anxiety--
"We can't ignore Tom's intimacy with them--it amounts to that; it will probably continue even if it's merely a fancy, and we must seem to know it; whatever comes of it, we can't disown it. They are very simple, unfashionable people, and unworldly; but I can't say that they are offensive, unless--unless," she added, in propitiation of her husband's smile, "unless the father--how did you find the father?" she implored.
"He will be very entertaining," said Corey, "if you start him on his paint. What was the disagreeable daughter like? Shall you have her?"
"She's little and dark. We must have them all," Mrs. Corey sighed. "Then you don't think a dinner would do?"
"Oh yes, I do. As you say, we can't disown Tom's relation to them, whatever it is. We had much better recognise it, and make the best of the inevitable. I think a Lapham dinner would be delightful." He looked at her with delicate irony in his voice and smile, and she fetched another sigh, so deep and sore now that he laughed outright. "Perhaps," he suggested, "it would be the best way of curing Tom of his fancy, if he has one. He has been seeing her with the dangerous advantages which a mother knows how to give her daughter in the family circle, and with no means of comparing her with other girls. You must invite several other very pretty girls."
"Do you really think so, Bromfield?" asked Mrs. Corey, taking courage a little. "That might do," But her spirits visibly sank again. "I don't know any other girl half so pretty."
"Well, then, better bred."
"She is very lady-like, very modest, and pleasing."