“But Mr. Marksley, they told me, is going to Pratt when he is graduated from the college, here. It will be four or five years before--”
“Some more of Eileen’s foolishness. What use has he for more education--with all that money? And she knows as well as I do that he can go into business with his brother Alfred, in St. Louis, the day after commencement. He doesn’t have to depend on his father, who detests him. I suppose Eileen has told you that fact, too.”
Mrs. Ascott shook her head, irritation mounting to anger, as her caller’s tone divested itself of that modicum of reserve that had been the inculcated habit of years. In all her experience she had never met a woman like Lavinia Trench. From their second meeting, there had been an undercurrent of hostility, which Lavinia was at great pains to subdue or conceal. A rich woman was a person to be envied ... and conciliated. In her normal state she would not have jeopardized the fragile bond of surface friendship that bound them.
Not that the interview reached the disgusting level of a quarrel. Yet Judith was betrayed into the fatal error of attempting to reason with a woman whose mental processes had never recognized the inevitable link between cause and effect. She did not know how to deal with the mind that leaped from one vantage point to another, with all the nimbleness and none of the objectivity of a circus acrobat. Dutton had once said of Mrs. Trench: “You can’t nail that woman down. When you trap her square, on her own proposition--she’s over yonder, on an entirely different subject, crowing over you. If she can’t make her point, she talks about something else.” But Judith gave little heed to Dutton’s mumblings.
The one thing Mrs. Trench had made unequivocally plain was that Larimore and his father must not be antagonized. This could be accomplished only by keeping Eileen’s fondness for Hal in the background, and avoiding any public contact with his highly immoral sister. It was in connection with Mrs. Nims that Judith blundered. She could not believe that either David or Larimore Trench would cast a stone at the woman who had sinned and was unhappy because of her sin.
“You mean Mary Magdalene, and all that? Well, I don’t believe Christ expects _me_ to associate with the woman who ran away from two husbands--travelled with the first one for three weeks before they were married at all. There’s no reforming a woman like Adelaide Marksley. She’s bad, through and through.”