Anna, in fact, had discovered in her amiable and elegant
mother-in-law an unexpected embodiment of the West Fifty-
fifth Street ideal. Mrs. Summers and Madame de Chantelle,
however strongly they would have disagreed as to the
authorized source of Christian dogma, would have found
themselves completely in accord on all the momentous
minutiae of drawing-room conduct; yet Mr. Leath treated his
mother's foibles with a respect which Anna's experience of
him forbade her to attribute wholly to filial affection.
In the early days, when she was still questioning the Sphinx
instead of trying to find an answer to it, she ventured to
tax her husband with his inconsistency.
"You say your mother won't like it if I call on that amusing
little woman who came here the other day, and was let in by
mistake; but Madame de Chantelle tells me she lives with her
husband, and when mother refused to visit Kitty Mayne you
said----"
Mr. Leath's smile arrested her. "My dear child, I don't
pretend to apply the principles of logic to my poor mother's
prejudices."
"But if you admit that they ARE prejudices----?"
"There are prejudices and prejudices. My mother, of course,
got hers from Monsieur de Chantelle, and they seem to me as
much in their place in this house as the pot-pourri in your
hawthorn jar. They preserve a social tradition of which I
should be sorry to lose the least perfume.
Pages:
88
89
90
91
92
93
94
95
96
97
98
99
100
101
102
103
104
105
106
107
108
109
110
111
112