“It was very kind of Mrs. Hardacre to warn me of the possibility of the duchess being prejudiced against me by the exhibition of a particular portrait. I can't conceive the possibility myself. But still Mrs. Hardacre's intention was kindly.”
Norma turned her head away for a moment. She could not trust herself to speak, for a stinging sarcasm with just a touch of the hysterical would have been all she could utter, and she had not the heart to undeceive him. She shot into the by-path of the gossip concerning Mrs. Hewson.
“Mother believes the stories about her. So do I in the loose sort of way in which our faith in anything is composed—even in our fellow-creatures' failings.”
“You defended her,” said Jimmie.
“You made me do so.”
“I?”
“Either you, because you carry about with you an uncomfortable Palace of Truth sort of atmosphere, or else the desire to rub it into my mother.”
“Rub what in?” Jimmie was puzzled.
Norma laughed somewhat bitterly. She saw that he was incapable of understanding the vulgar pettiness of the scheme of motives that had prompted the utterances of her mother and herself. She could not explain.
“I think you are born out of your century,” she said.