Lawton's fatuous conversation in the de
Laney's drawing-room, or Maude Eliza's dressed-up self-consciousness.
The experience of having the three Westerners to dinner just once
would, Bennington knew, drive his lady mother to the verge of nervous
prostration--he remembered his father's one and only experience in
bringing business connections home to lunch--; his imagination failed
to picture the effect of her having to endure them as actual members of
the family! As if this were not bad enough, his restless fancy carried
him a step farther. He perceived the agonies of shame and
mortification, real even though they were conventional, she would have
to endure in the face of society. That the de Laneys, social leaders,
rigid in respectability, should be forced to the humiliation of
acknowledging a misalliance, should be forced to the added humiliation
of confessing that this marriage was not only with a family of inferior
social standing, but with one actually unlettered and vulgar!
Bennington knew only too well the temper of his mother--and of society.
It would not be difficult to expand these doubts, to amplify these
reasons, and even to adduce others which occurred to the unhappy young
man as he climbed the hill.
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