and Mrs. Moreen, as
Pemberton had desired it should. At the same time, if he had supposed
his threat would do something towards bringing them round, he was
disappointed to find them taking for granted--how vulgar their perception
_had_ been!--that he had already given them away. There was a mystic
uneasiness in their parental breasts, and that had been the inferior
sense of it. None the less however, his threat did touch them; for if
they had escaped it was only to meet a new danger. Mr. Moreen appealed
to him, on every precedent, as a man of the world; but his wife had
recourse, for the first time since his domestication with them, to a fine
hauteur, reminding him that a devoted mother, with her child, had arts
that protected her against gross misrepresentation.
"I should misrepresent you grossly if I accused you of common honesty!"
our friend replied; but as he closed the door behind him sharply,
thinking he had not done himself much good, while Mr. Moreen lighted
another cigarette, he heard his hostess shout after him more touchingly:
"Oh you do, you _do_, put the knife to one's throat!"
The next morning, very early, she came to his room.
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