nose?”
“I daresay I’m a bit old-fashioned, mother, but I have a distaste for vanity-cases used at table. Oh, I know it’s done—and all that—but as Madeleine is doubtless at once going to her boudoir, it would seem unnecessary—oh, pshaw, I only said it in a joke, anyway.”
“A very poor joke, in my estimation,” and Mrs. Selden pursed her thin lips in utter and entire disapproval.
So Barham tried changing the subject.
“Whither away to-night, Madeleine? Or staying at home?”
He glanced at her elaborate house gown, thinking what a pretty woman his wife was. Her dark, bright eyes, her soft dusky hair, and her charming coloring made her almost a beauty. But, like her mother, her attractiveness was lessened by an expression of perversity, a hint of readiness to take offense.
“No; I’m not staying at home—but what does it matter to you where I’m going? As I said, we have no interests in common—and your inquiries are mere politeness!”
“At least, let us keep politeness, Madeleine.”
Barham’s voice was a bit wistful, and Madeleine might have responded to that note in it, but Mrs. Selden took it up.
“Are you implying that Madeleine is lacking in politeness? Have a care, Andrew! I won’t stand everything!”
Now Andrew Barham was not a weak-spirited man, though it might seem so. But his innate courtesy to women and his dread of a scene kept him from any show of righteous indignation at this speech.
Fortunately, Madeleine rose from the table, preventing any further tilting.
“No,” she said, suddenly smiling prettily, “I won’t tell you where I’m going—yes, I will, I’m going to Mrs. Gardner’s. Rest assured it’s a place you wouldn’t enjoy, so I shan’t invite you to go along. Where are you going? To the Club?”
“Yes; maybe to a theater afterward—maybe not.”
He looked a bit gloomy as he stood in the hall, lighting a cigarette, and nodding to the man to bring his hat.
“You’re extremely good-looking, Drew—but I get so tired of looking at you,” his wife said, with a bored little smile. “Perhaps when I see you next, you’ll look gayer,” and with a mere mockery of throwing a kiss to him, she ran off upstairs to her own rooms.
Mrs. Selden never spent her evenings with “the children.” She read the papers and then, dawdling over her rather extensive preparations, she went early to bed.
Leaving the house, Barham walked to his favorite Club, and as he went he mused on the strange fate that had given him Madeleine for a wife.
“No interests in common,” he quoted to himself. “Why haven’t we? If I had her to myself—without mother Selden around—I might persuade her to take up golf or some outdoor thing that we could do together. But she’d never give up her Bridge. And I can’t learn the confounded game! Strange, too; I’ve a good head for lots of things—yet there are nincompoops like Travers and Jim Bell who can put up a wonderful game of Bridge, though they couldn’t cope with the tiniest one of my problems.
“If I had a wife, now, like—” but his own sense of right and wrong forbade him to go further.
After all, Madeleine was his wife—and that was all there was about that. He must try, he decided, to make himself more desirable in her eyes. More attractive, more useful—Well, she had said, that though he was good-looking—that was a nasty fling! As to being useful—he paid her bills and was always a gallant attendant when she wanted him.
But she seldom wanted him. Usually she preferred to go about with her own cronies, who liked him as little as he liked them.
Not that they were really objectionable. But they were a gay and frivolous lot, and even with the best intentions he couldn’t speak their lingo.
A man of the world, a clubman, a man about town—all these he was. A good fellow, a fine pal—all his chums would tell you that—yet the sort of Smart Set, semi-fast people his wife enjoyed, were as utter strangers to him.
He had tried—tried to talk their small talk, laugh at their small jests, fathom their small souls—but, though with no undue sense of his own importance he couldn’t make good from their point of view.
He set it all down to his own shortcomings, but the fact remained. And so as this was part of the rift, the Barhams had come to spend their evenings, as a rule, away from each other.
However, he had become pretty well used to it, and as he reached his Club he was in a more cheerful frame of mind. He went in with a smile, ran across good old Nick Nelson, and stopped in the smoking room for a chat with him.
Meanwhile, Madeleine, in her room, was doing some thinking. It was too early to dress and she had some other things to think out first, anyway.
At last she rose and went down the hall to her mother’s rooms.
“Mother,” she said, patting the fine white hair, “I——”
“I know what that means,” and Mrs. Selden drew her head away from her daughter’s caressing hand. “Now, Madeleine, I haven’t a cent for you. It’s outrageous, the way you go on. You know, very well, if Andrew had the least idea how you are managing, he would——”
“Yes, what would he do? He hasn’t the power to do anything——”
“Don’t be too sure. You know Andrew—but I know the world better than you do, I know men better than you do—and you needn’t think that because Andrew never has broken loose, he never will!”
“Broken loose—how?”
“Reprimand you—disgrace you—punish you——”
“Disgrace! Punish! Mother, what do you mean?”
“Oh, hush up, child—don’t think I don’t know things! Andrew and I both spoil you—we’re both too lenient with you—but—we both know——”
“Pooh! What do you know? Only that I lose a lot at Bridge! Well, I can’t help it, if I have bad luck. I’m a first-class player—any one will tell you that. But I’m having a run of ill luck. Everybody has ’em, and they have to be followed by a streak of good luck. Everybody knows that. And when the good luck comes I’ll pay back all I’ve borrowed from you or anybody else—and more, too. Now, come, Mother, be a duck and let me have at least a few hundreds.”
“Madeleine, I can’t.”
“That means you won’t.”
“Take it either way you like—but you won’t get any.”
“Then I’ll tell you what I think of you! I think you’re a horrid old woman who refuses her own child—her only child, a few paltry dollars! You care nothing at all for my pleasure! You’ve feathered your own nest—or, rather I feathered it for you, by my marriage with a rich man! You have everything you want—ease, comfort, luxury—while I, a rich man’s wife, haven’t
