“Why not?” she flung back at him. “Is it also reported that I come from the slums? We were never rich as the Guestwicks are rich, but until my father died we lived in good style as we know it in the South. I am at least as well educated as my sisters-in-law who refuse to recognize that I exist. I was at the Sacred Heart Convent in Paris. I sing and paint and play the piano as well as most girls but do none of these well enough to make a living at it. I came here to New York hoping that through the influence of my father’s friends I could get some sort of a position which would give me a living wage.” She shrugged her shoulders, “I wonder if you know how differently people look at one when one is well off and when one comes begging favors?”
“None better,” he exclaimed bitterly.
“So I had to get in to the chorus because they said my figure would do even if I hadn’t a good enough voice. Then I met Norton.”
She looked at Anthony Trent with a little friendly smile that stirred him oddly. In that moment he envied Norton Guestwick more than any living creature.
“What do they say about my husband?” she asked.
“You can never believe reports,” he said evasively.
“I’ll tell you,” she returned, “they say he is a waster, a libertine, weak and degenerate. They are wrong. He is full of sweet, generous impulses. His mother has so pampered him that he was almost hopeless till I met him. I expect you think it’s conceited of me but I have a great influence on him.”
“You would on any man,” he said fervently.
She looked at him in a way that suggested a certain subtle tribute to his best qualities.
“Ah, but you are different,” she sighed, “you are strong and resolute. You would sway the woman you loved and make her what you wanted her to be. He is clay for my molding and I want him to be a splendid, fine son like my father.” She looked at Trent with a tender, proud smile, “If you had ever met my father you would understand.”