east Pete told her it was a prejudice--

Against what, in Heaven's name, Lanley at first wondered; and then it
came to him.

"Oh, you have a prejudice against divorce?" he said.

Mrs. Wayne looked at him reproachfully.

"Oh, no," she answered. "How could you think that? But what has divorce
to do with it? Your granddaughter hasn't been divorced."

A sound of disgust at the mere suggestion escaped him, and he said
coldly:

"My daughter divorced her first husband."

"Oh, I did not know."

"Against what, then, is this unconquerable prejudice of yours?"

"Against the daughters of the leisure class."

He was still quite at sea.

"You dislike them?"

"I fear them."

If she had said that she considered roses a menace, he could not have
been more puzzled. He repeated her words aloud, as if he hoped that
they might have some meaning for him if he heard his own lips
pronouncing them:

"You fear them."

"Yes," she went on, now interested only in expressing her belief, "I fear
their ignorance and idleness and irresponsibility and self-indulgence,
and, all the more because it is so delicate and attractive and
unconscious; and their belief that the world owes them luxury and
happiness without their lifting a finger. I fear their cowardice and lack
of character--"

"Cowardice!" he cried, catching at the first word he could. "My dear Mrs.
Wayne, the aristocrats in the French Revolution, the British officer--"

"Oh, yes, they know how to die," she answered; "but do they know how to
live when the horrible, sordid little strain of every-day life begins to
make demands upon them, their futile education, the moral feebleness that
comes with perfect safety! I know something can be made of such girls,
but I don't want my son sacrificed in the process."

There was a long, dark silence; then Mr. Lanley said with a particularly
careful and exact enunciation:

"I think, my dear madam, that you cannot have known very many of the
young women you are describing. It may be that there are some like
that--daughters of our mushroom finance; but I can assure you that the
children of ladies and gentlemen are not at all as you seem to imagine."

It was characteristic of Mrs. Wayne that, still absorbed by her own
convictions, she did not notice the insult of hearing ladies and
gentlemen described to her as if they were beings wholly alien to her
experience; but the tone of his speech startled her, and she woke, like a
person comin