"I think, my dear, City men have ways and means of ascertaining these things."
"Very likely," said Mrs. Mortomley, "for I think, my dear, City men are usually a set of ill-natured gossiping old women."
"Do not be cross, Dolly," suggested her friend.
"I shall be cross if I choose, Leonora," said Mrs. Mortomley. "It is enough to make any one cross. What right has Mr. Werner--for it is Mr. Werner, I know, who has really spoken to me through your mouth--what right has he, I repeat, to dictate to us how we shall spend our money. If he likes to have horrid, tiresome, vulgar, prosy people at his house--when he might get pleasant people--that is his affair. I do not interfere with him--(only I will not go to your parties)--but he has no sort of claim to dictate to us, and I will not bear it, Nora, I will not."
"Dolly, dear, I was only speaking for your good--"
"I do not want good spoken to me," interrupted Mrs. Mortomley.
"And it is not for your good," went on Mrs. Werner calmly, "that you should have Antonia and Rupert quartered here. If your husband had given them say a couple of hundred pounds a year, they would have thought far more of his generosity, and it would have cost you less than half what it will do now, besides being wiser in every way."
"Had not you better lay that statement before him yourself?" asked Dolly.
"If I were his wife I should unhesitatingly," was the reply.
"Well, I am his wife and I will not," declared Dolly. "If he likes to have them in the house I cannot see why he should not, so long as they do not make their proximity disagreeable to me; and I am not likely to let them do that, am I, Nora?"
"So long as you have your house filled with company, and are out at parties continually, perhaps not."
"Leonora," began Mrs. Mortomley, "you are the only friend I ever had in my life. I am never likely to have another; but sooner than submit to this eternal lecturing I would rather kiss and say good-bye now, than go on to an open quarrel. Why can we not agree to differ; why cannot Mr. Werner leave my husband to manage his own affairs, and you leave me to order my way of life as seems most satisfactory to me? You think you are doing great things for your husband because, at his desire, you invite City notables and their wives to dinner, and perhaps you may be. All I can say is, I should not be doing Archie any service by inviting them here. I do not know whether rich City snobs and snobesses hate _you_--perhaps not as there is a real live lord, not a Lord Mayor, amongst your relatives--but they hate me. If I had never come in contact with one of them it might have spared us some enemies; and I never mean so long as I live to come in contact with another, except those who are unavoidable, such as Antonia's elderly young man, for instance. There is nothing I can do or wear or say right in their eyes. I feel this. I know it. They detest me because I am different from them, and they do not think, as I was not a lady of fortune or a lord's niece, I have any right to be different. I do not know why oil should impute it as a sin to water, that it is water and not oil, but these people who cannot mix with me and with whom I cannot mix, do impute it to me as a sin that I am myself and not them. There is the case in a nutshell, Mrs. Werner, and I fail to see why you and I should quarrel over it."