Page:The Tattooed Countess (1924).pdf/253

 Yes, you can. You understand perfectly well what I mean. Ella, you're a middle-aged woman. You're as old as I am, and he's a boy seventeen years old. You are a Countess and he is the son of a wholesale grocer. Of course, if he only came to call on you here, it wouldn't be so bad, but you trapes all over the country with him. Ella, she pleaded, remember that this isn't Paris. They're saying terrible things about you. . . the worst, even. If you won't think of yourself, think of your sister.

I really can't see, Mayme. . . the Countess was white with anger now, but her voice was calm, incisive, bitterly cutting. . . how this is any of your business. The impertinence! she muttered, half to herself; then, turning back to her inquisitor: Why doesn't the town clean itself up first? Why not keep Fred Baker out of Chicago resorts?

Her fury was contagious: Mayme Townsend caught it. Ella, she cried, do you know what you are? You're an old sensualist! You judge everybody else, all of us, by your own rotten standards, and you think of nothing but sex. Why, you don't see this town at all except through dirty, coloured glass!

The Countess, paying no heed to this outburst, continued her catalogue of alternatives: Or ask Mrs. Cameron to stop taking morphia and making a fool of herself in public?

Ella!