"Selma, you are talking nonsense," Littleton exclaimed with sudden sternness.
The decision in his tone made her start. The color mounted to her face, and she surveyed him for an instant haughtily, as though he had done her an injury. Then with an oratorical air and her archangel look, she said, "You do not seem to understand, Wilbur, that I am trying to save you from yourself."
Littleton was ever susceptible to that look of hers. It suggested incarnate conscientiousness, and seemed incompatible with human imperfection or unworthy ambitions. He was too wroth to relent altogether, but he compressed his lips and returned her look searchingly, as though he would scrutinize her soul.
"I'm bound to believe, I do believe, that you are trying to help me, Selma. I need your advice and help, even against myself, I dare say. But there are some matters of which you cannot judge so well as I. You must trust my opinion where the development of my professional life is concerned. I shall not forget your caution to be practical, but for the sake of expediency I cannot be false to what I believe true. Come, dear, let us go to bed."
He put his hand on her arm to lead her upstairs, but she turned from it to collect her fan and gloves. Looking, not at him, but at herself in the mirror, she answered, "Of course. I trust, though, that this does not mean you intend to act foolishly in regard to the Parsons house."
"I have already told you," he said, looking back, "that I am going to make another attempt to satisfy that exasperating woman and her daughter."
"And you can satisfy them, I'm sure, if you only choose to," said Selma, by way of a firm, final observation.
Littleton's prophecy in regard to the waning of friendship between his wife and Mrs. Williams proved to be correct. Propinquity had made them intimate, and separation by force of circumstances put a summary end to frequent and cordial intercourse between them. As he had predicted, their first invitation to the new house was still the last at the end of three months, and save for a few words on one occasion in the street, Selma and Flossy did not meet during that period. But during that same three months Selma's attention was constantly attracted to the Williamses by prominent newspaper allusions to their prosperity and growing fashionable prestige. What they did and where they went were chronicled in the then new style journalistic social gossip, and the every-day world was made familiar with his financial opinions and his equipages and her toilettes. The meeting in the street was an ordeal for Selma. Flossy had been shopping and was about to step into her carriage, the door of which was held open by an imposing liveried footman, when the two women nearly collided.