Page:The Fruit of the Tree (Wharton 1907).djvu/382

Rh Meanwhile Mr. Tredegar arrived, and the three dined together, the two women bending meekly to his discourse, which was never more oracular and authoritative than when delivered to the gentler sex alone. Amherst’s absence, in particular, seemed to loose the thin current of Mr. Tredegar’s eloquence. He was never quite at ease in the presence of an independent mind, and Justine often reﬂected that, even had the two men known nothing of each other’s views, there would have been between them an instinctive and irreducible hostility—they would have disliked each other if they had merely jostled elbows in the street.

Yet even freed from Amherst’s presence Mr. Tredegar showed a darkling brow, and as Justine slipped away after dinner she felt that she left Bessy to something more serious than the usual business conference.

How serious, she was to learn that very night, when, in the small hours, her friend burst in on her tearfully. Bessy was ruined—ruined that was what Mr. Tredegar had come to tell her! She might have known he would not have travelled to Lynbrook for a triﬂe.… She had expected to ﬁnd herself cramped, restricted—to be warned that she must “manage,” hateful word!… But this! This was incredible! Unendurable! There was no money to build the gymnasium—none at all! And all because it had been swallowed up at Westmore—because the ridiculous [ 366 ]