Hudson River Bracketed by Edith Wharton

Mrs. Tracy's forgiveness turned out harder to win than they had imagined. When they came on her that evening clearing away her lonely supper, as Laura Lou had predicted, their arrival provoked a burst of tears and an embrace in which Vance managed to get included. But the rousing of Mrs. Tracy's emotions did not affect her judgment. The exchange of acrimonious letters between Paul's Landing and Euphoria, at the time when she had ordered Vance out of her house, had sown ineradicable seeds. Even had her son-in-law's prospects impressed her as much as he had hoped, her view would not have changed; but, as Vance soon perceived, she remained unimpressed by the documents so proudly spread before her. "I guess newspaper work's more reliable than magazines," she merely remarked, no doubt mindful of the dizzy heights to which journalism had lifted Bunty Hayes.

But these were secondary considerations; for she now regarded Vance as the corrupter of both her children. Vance had taken Upton to a "bad house" (so Upton, the sneak, had never shouldered his part of the blame! ); Vance had made Laura Lou deceive her mother and break her promise to Bunty Hayes, the promise on the strength of which Mrs. Tracy had accepted a loan that it might take years to repay. Vance had wounded her in her pride and her affection; and the double humiliation was not effaced by this vague talk about a review that was going to give him a hundred dollars a piece for articles he hadn't even written.