To make this announcement she had risen to her feet, with lips already parted; but Mrs. Collingham forestalled her.
"Sit down again, my dear. I want to talk to you some more. I must tell you about Mr. Collingham." She herself sank into the chair near Jennie which she had already occupied. She panted as after a difficult experience. "Oh dear! It's been so trying! You don't know him, do you? Well, he's a good man--kind and just in his way--but oh, so stern and relentless! If he knew what Bob had done in going through that mad thing with you, he'd turn the boy adrift."
Having reseated herself already, Jennie now closed her lips. She had forgotten Mr. Collingham. Coming to stay was meeting a new obstacle.
"It's only fair to you to make you understand what kind of man my husband is. Of course, he's a strong man, otherwise he wouldn't have accomplished all he has. My son, my daughter, I myself--we're but puppets on his string. His word has to be law to us. And with Bob the way he is--wanting to marry every girl he meets--and forgetting her next day--his father has no patience. You don't know how hard it is for me, my dear, always to have to stand between them."
As she paused to dab her eyes, Jennie saw the limousine, the villa, with Teddy's chance of pickling down ten a week, fading out like a picture in the movies.
"I wouldn't dare to tell him of the great wrong Bob has done to you. He'd disinherit him on the spot. If Bob were to insist on having this escapade--you wouldn't really call it a marriage, would you?--but if he were to insist on its being made public, why, there'd be an end of his relations with his father. My husband would neither give him a cent nor leave him a cent. I must say that Bob would deserve it; but, Jennie, I'm thinking of you. You'd have forsaken the man you loved, married a man you didn't care for, and got nothing in the world to show for it. That's where you'd have to suffer, and I can see well enough that you're suffering already."
There was every reason now that Jennie's tears should begin to flow. Flow they did while her companion watched.
"And yet, as you'll see, Mr. Collingham is not an unkind man. When I explained to him that we might be more indebted to you than I had thought at first, he said--"