"You mean I'm not to see him?"

"Of course not."

"I must see him," said Mathilde.

Lanley looked at Wayne.

"This is an opportunity for you to rehabilitate yourself. You ought to be man enough to promise you won't see her until you are in a position to ask her to be your wife."

"I have asked her that already, you know," returned Wayne with an attempt at a smile.

"Pete, you wouldn't desert me?" said Mathilde.

"If Mr. Wayne had any pride, my dear, he would not wish to come to a house where he was unwelcome," said her mother.

"I'm afraid I haven't any of that sort of pride at all, Mrs. Farron."

Adelaide made a little gesture, as much as to say, with her traditions, she really did not know how to deal with people who hadn't.

"Mathilde,"—Wayne spoke very gently,—"don't you think you could stop crying?"

"I'm trying all the time, Pete. You won't go away, no matter what they say?"

"Of course not."

"It seems to be a question between what I think best for my daughter as opposed to what you think best—for yourself," observed Adelaide.

"Nobody wants to turn you out of the house, you know," said Mr. Lanley in a conciliatory tone, "but the engagement is at an end."

"If you do turn him out, I'll go with him," said Mathilde, and she took his hand and held it in a tight, moist clasp.

They looked so young and so distressed as they stood there hand in hand that Lanley found himself relenting.

"We don't say that your marriage will never be possible," he said. "We are asking you to wait—consent to a separation of six months."

"Six months!" wailed Mathilde.

"With your whole life before you?" her grandfather returned wistfully.

"I'm afraid I am asking a little more than that, Papa," said Adelaide. "I have never been enthusiastic about this engagement, but while I was watching and trying to be cooperative, it seems Mr. Wayne intended to run off with my daughter. I know Mathilde is young and easily influenced, but I don't think, I don't really think,"—Adelaide made it evident that she was being just,—"that any other of all the young men who come to the house would have tried to do that, and none of them would have got themselves into this difficulty. I mean,"—she looked up at Wayne,—"I think almost any of them would have had a little better business judgment than you have shown."

"Mama," put in her daughter, "can't you see how honest it was of Pete not to go, anyhow?"

Adelaide smiled ironically.

"No; I can't think that an unusually high standard, dear."

This seemed to represent the final outrage to Mathilde. She turned.

"O Pete, wouldn't your mother take me in?" she asked.

And as if to answer the question, Pringle opened the door and announced Mrs. Wayne.



CHAPTER XIV

In all the short, but crowded, time since Lanley had first known Mrs. Wayne he had never been otherwise than glad to see her, but now his heart sank. It seemed to him that an abyss was about to open between them, and that all their differences of spirit, stimulating enough while they remained in the abstract, were about to be cast into concrete form.

Mathilde and Pete were so glad to see her that they said nothing, but looked at her beamingly. Whatever Adelaide's feelings may have been, she greeted her guest with a positive courtesy, and she was the only one who did.

Mrs. Wayne nodded to her son, smiled more formally at Mr. Lanley, and then her eyes falling upon Mathilde, she realized that she had intruded on some sort of conference. She had a natural dread of such meetings, at which it seemed to her that the only thing which she must not do was the only thing that she knew how to do, namely, to speak her mind. So she at once decided to withdraw.

"Your man insisted on my coming in, Mrs. Farron," she said. "I came to ask about Mr. Farron; but I see you are in the midst of a family discussion, and so I won't—"

Everybody separately cried out to her to stay as she began to retreat to the door, and no one more firmly than Adelaide, who thought it as careless as Mr. Lanley thought it creditable that a mother would be willing to go away and leave the discussion of her son's life to others. Adelaide saw an opportunity of killing two birds.

"You are just the person for whom I have been longing, Mrs. Wayne," she said. "Now you have come, we can settle the whole question."

"And just what is the question?" asked Mrs. Wayne. She sat down, looking distressed and rather guilty. She knew they were going to ask her what she knew about all the things that had been going on, and a hasty examination of her consciousness showed her that she knew everything, though she had avoided Pete's full confidence. She knew simply by knowing that any two young people who loved each other would rather marry than separate for a year. But she was aware that this deduction, so inevitable to her, was exactly the one which would be denied by the others. So she sat, with a nervously pleasant smile on her usually untroubled face, and waited for Adelaide to speak. She did not have long to wait.

"You did not know, I am sure, Mrs. Wayne, that your son intended to run away with my daughter?"

All four of them stared at her, making her feel more and more guilty; and at last Lanley, unable to bear it, asked:

"Did you know that, Mrs. Wayne?"

"Oh, dear!" said Mrs. Wayne. "Yes. I knew it was possible; so did you. Pete didn't tell me about it, though."

"But I did tell Mrs. Farron," said Pete.

Adelaide protested at once.

"You told me?" Then she remembered that a cloud had obscured the end of their last interview, but she did not withdraw her protest.

"You know, Mrs. Farron, you have a bad habit of not listening to what is said to you," Wayne answered firmly.

This sort of impersonal criticism was to Adelaide the greatest impertinence, and she showed her annoyance.

"In spite of the disabilities of age, Mr. Wayne," she said, "I find I usually can get a simple idea if clearly presented."

"Why, how absurd that is, Wayne!" put in Mr. Lanley. "You don't mean to say that you told Mrs. Farron you were going to elope with her daughter, and she didn't take in what you said?"

"And yet that is just what took place."

Adelaide glanced at her father, as much as to say, "You see what kind of young man it is," and then went on:

"One fact at least I have learned only this minute—that is that the finances for this romantic trip were to be furnished by a dishonorable firm from which your son has been dismissed; or, no, resigned, isn't it?"

The human interest attached to losing a job brought mother and son together on the instant.

"O Pete, you've left the firm!"

He nodded.

"O my poor boy!"

He made a gesture, indicating that this was not the time to discuss the economic situation, and Adelaide went smoothly on:

"And now, Mrs. Wayne, the point is this. I am considered harsh because I insist that a young man without an income who has just come near to running off with my child on money that was almost a bribe is not a person in whom I have unlimited confidence. I ask—it seems a tolerably mild request—that they do not see each other for six months."

"I cannot agree to that," said Wayne decidedly.

"Really, Mr. Wayne, do you feel yourself in a position to agree or disagree? We have never consented to your engagement. We have never thought the marriage a suitable one, have we, Papa?"

"No," said Mr. Lanley in a tone strangely dead.

"Why is it not suitable?" asked Mrs. Wayne, as if she really hoped that an agreement might be reached by rational discussion.

"Why?" said Adelaide, and smiled. "Dear Mrs. Wayne, these things are rather difficult to explain. Wouldn't it be easier for all of us if you would just accept the statement that we think so without trying to decide whether we are right or wrong?"

"I'm afraid it must be discussed," answered Mrs. Wayne.

Adelaide leaned back, still with her faint smile, as if defying, though very politely, any one to discuss it with her.

It was inevitable that Mrs. Wayne should turn to Mr. Lanley.

"You, too, think it unsuitable?"

He bowed gravely.

"You dislike my son?"

"Quite the contrary."

"Then you must be able to tell me the reason."

"I will try," he said. He felt like a soldier called upon to defend a lost cause. It was his cause, he couldn't desert it. His daughter and his granddaughter needed his protection; but he knew he was giving up something that he valued more than his life as he began to speak. "We feel the difference in background," he said, "of early traditions, of judging life from the same point of view. Such differences can be overcome by time and money—" He stopped, for she was looking at him with the same wondering interest, devoid of anger, with which he had seen her study Wilsey. "I express myself badly," he murmured.

Mrs. Wayne rose to her feet.

"The trouble isn't with your expression," she said.

"You mean that what I am trying to express is wrong?"

"It seems so to me."

"What is wrong about it?"

She seemed to think over the possibilities for an instant, and then she shook her head.

"I don't think I could make you understand," she answered. She said it very gently, but it was cruel, and he turned white under the pain, suffering all the more that she was so entirely without malice. She turned to her son. "I'm going, Pete. Don't you think you might as well come, too?"

Mathilde sprang up and caught Mrs. Wayne's hand.

"Oh, don't go!" she cried. "Don't take him away! You know they are trying to separate us. Oh, Mrs. Wayne, won't you take me in? Can't I stay with you while we are waiting?"

At this every one focused their eyes on Mrs. Wayne. Pete felt sorry for his mother, knowing how she hated to make a sudden decision, knowing how she hated to do anything disagreeable to those about her; but he never for an instant doubted what her decision would be. Therefore he could hardly believe his eyes when he saw her shaking her head.

"I couldn't do that, my dear."

"Mother!"

"Of course you couldn't," said Mr. Lanley, blowing his nose immediately after under the tremendous emotion of finding that she was not an enemy, after all. Adelaide smiled to herself. She was thinking, "You could and would, if I hadn't put in that sting about his failures."

"Why can't you, Mother?" asked Pete.

"We'll talk that over at home."

"My dear boy," said Mr. Lanley, kindly, "no one over thirty would have to ask why."

"No parent likes to assist at the kidnapping of another parent's child," said Adelaide.

"Good Heavens! my mother has kidnapped so many children in her day!"

"From the wrong sort of home, I suppose," said Lanley, in explanation, to no one, perhaps, so much as to himself.

"Am I to infer that she thinks mine the right sort? How delightful!" said Adelaide.

"Mrs. Wayne, is it because I'm richer than Pete that you won't take me in?" asked Mathilde, visions of bestowing her wealth in charity flitting across her mind.

The other nodded. Wayne stared.

"Mother," he said, "you don't mean to say you are letting yourself be influenced by a taunt like that of Mrs. Farron's, which she didn't even believe herself?"

Mrs. Wayne was shocked.

"Oh, no; not that, Pete. It isn't that at all. But when a girl has been brought up—"

Wayne saw it all in an instant.

"Oh, yes, I see. We'll talk of that later."

But Adelaide had seen, too.

"No; do go on, Mrs. Wayne. You don't approve of the way my daughter has been brought up."

"I don't think she has been brought up to be a poor man's wife."

"No. I own I did not have that particular destiny in mind."

"And when I heard you assuming just now that every one was always concerned about money, and when I realized that the girl must have been brought up in that atmosphere and belief—"

"I see. You thought she was not quite the right wife for your son?"

"But I would try so hard," said Mathilde. "I would learn; I—"

"Mathilde," interrupted her mother, "when a lady tells you you are not good enough for her son, you must not protest."

"Come, come, Adelaide, there is no use in being disagreeable," said Mr. Lanley.

"Disagreeable!" returned his daughter. "Mrs. Wayne and I are entirely agreed. She thinks her son too good for my daughter, and I think my daughter too good for her son. Really, there seems nothing more to be said. Good-by, Mr. Wayne." She held out her long, white hand to him. Mrs. Wayne was trying to make her position clearer to Mathilde, but Pete thought this an undesirable moment for such an attempt.

Partly as an assertion of his rights, partly because she looked so young and helpless, he stopped and kissed her.

"I'll come and see you about half-past ten tomorrow morning," he said very clearly, so that every one could hear. Adelaide looked blank; she was thinking that on Pringle she could absolutely depend. Wayne saw his mother and Lanley bow to each other, and the next moment he had contrived to get her out of the house.

Mathilde rushed away to her own room, and Adelaide and her father were left alone. She turned to him with one of her rare caresses.

"Dear Papa," she said, "what a comfort you are to me! What should I do without you? You'll never desert me, will you?" And she put her head on his shoulder. He patted her with an absent-minded rhythm, and then he said, as if he were answering some secret train of thought:

"I don't see what else I could have done."

"You couldn't have done anything else," replied his daughter, still nestling against him. "But Mrs. Baxter had frightened me with her account of your sentimental admiration for Mrs. Wayne, and I thought you might want to make yourself agreeable to her at the expense of my poor child."

She felt his shoulder heave with a longer breath.

"I can't imagine putting anything before Mathilde's happiness," he said, and after a pause he added: "I really must go home. Mrs. Baxter will think me a neglectful host."

"Don't you want to bring her to dine here to-night? I'll try and get some one to meet her. Let me see. She thinks Mr. Wilsey—"

"Oh, I can't stand Wilsey," answered her father, crossly.

"Well, I'll think of some one to sacrifice on the altar of your friendship. I certainly don't want to dine alone with Mathilde. And, by the way, Papa, I haven't mentioned any of this to Vincent."

He thought it was admirable of her to bear her anxieties alone so as to spare her sick husband.

"Poor girl!" he said. "You've had a tot of trouble lately."

In the meantime Wayne and his mother walked slowly home.

"I suppose you're furious at me, Pete," she said.

"Not a bit," he answered. "For a moment, when I saw what you were going to say, I was terrified. But no amount of tact would have made Mrs. Farron feel differently, and I think they might as well know what we really think and feel. I was only sorry if it hurt Mathilde."

"Oh dear, it's so hard to be truthful!" exclaimed his mother. He laughed, for he wished she sometimes found it harder; and she went on:

"Poor little Mathilde! You know I wouldn't hurt her if I could help it. It's not her fault. But what a terrible system it is, and how money does blind people! They can't see you at all as you are, and yet if you had fifty thousand dollars a year, they'd be more aware of your good points than I am. They can't see that you have resolution and charm and a sense of honor. They don't see the person, they just see the lack of income."

Pete smiled.

"A person is all Mrs. Farron says she asks for her daughter."

"She does not know a person when she sees one."

"She knew one when she married Farron."

Mrs. Wayne sniffed.

"Perhaps he married her," she replied.

Her son thought this likely, but he did not answer, for she had given him an idea—to see Farron. Farron would at least understand the situation. His mother approved of the suggestion.

"Of course he's not Mathilde's father."

"He's not a snob."

They had reached the house, and Pete was fishing in his pocket for his keys.

"Do you think Mr. Lanley is a snob?" he asked.

As usual Mrs. Wayne evaded the direct answer.

"I got an unfavorable impression of him this afternoon."

"For failing to see that I was a king among men?"

"For backing up every stupid thing his daughter said."

"Loyalty is a fine quality."

"Justice is better," answered his mother.

"Oh, well, he's old," said Wayne, dismissing the whole subject.

They walked up their four flights in silence, and then Wayne remembered to ask something that had been in his mind several times.

"By the way, Mother, how did you happen to come to the Farrons at all?"

She laughed rather self-consciously.

"I hoped perhaps Mr. Farron might be well enough to see me a moment about Marty. The truth is, Pete, Mr. Farron is the real person in that whole family."

That evening he wrote Farron a note, asking him to see him the next morning at half-past ten about "this trouble of which, of course, Mrs. Farron has told you." He added a request that he would tell Pringle of his intention in case he could give the interview, because Mrs. Farron had been quite frank in saying that she would give orders not to let him in.

Farron received this note with his breakfast. Adelaide was not there. He had had no hint from her of any crisis. He had not come down to dinner the evening before to meet Mrs. Baxter and the useful people asked to entertain her, but he had seen Mathilde's tear-stained face, and in a few minutes with his father-in-law had encountered one or two evident evasions. Only Adelaide had been unfathomable.

After he had read the letter and thought over the situation, he sent for Pringle, and gave orders that when Mr. Wayne came he would see him.

Pringle did not exactly make an objection, but stated a fact when he replied that Mrs. Farron had given orders that Mr. Wayne was not to be allowed to see Miss Severance.

"Exactly," said Farron. "Show him here." Here was his own study.

As it happened, Adelaide was sitting with him, making very good invalid's talk, when Pringle announced, "Mr. Wayne."

"Pringle, I told you—" Adelaide began, but her husband cut her short.

"He has an appointment with me, Adelaide."

"You don't understand, Vin. You mustn't see him."

Wayne was by this time in the room.

"But I wish to see him, my dear Adelaide, and," Farron added, "I wish to see him alone."

"No," she answered, with a good deal of excitement; "that you cannot. This is my affair, Vincent—the affair of my child."

He looked at her for a second, and then opening the door into his bedroom, he said to Wayne:

"Will you come in here?" The door was closed behind the two men.

Wayne was not a coward, although he had dreaded his interview with Adelaide; it was his very respect for Farron that kept him from feeling even nervous.

"Perhaps I ought not to have asked you to see me," he began.

"I'm very glad to see you," answered Farron. "Sit down, and tell me the story as you see it from the beginning."

It was a comfort to tell the story at last to an expert. Wayne, who had been trying for twenty-four hours to explain what underwriting meant, what were the responsibilities of brokers in such matters, what was the function of such a report as his, felt as if he had suddenly groped his way out of a fog as he talked, with hardly an interruption but a nod or a lightening eye from Farron. He spoke of Benson. "I know the man," said Farron; of Honaton, "He was in my office once." Wayne told how Mathilde, and then he himself, had tried to inform Mrs. Farron of the definiteness of their plans to be married.

"How long has this been going on?" Farron asked.

"At least ten days."

Farron nodded. Then Wayne told of the discovery of the proof at the printer's and his hurried meeting in the park to tell Mathilde. Here Farron stopped him suddenly.

"What was it kept you from going through with it just the same?"

"You're the first person who has asked me that," answered Pete.

"Perhaps you did not even think of such a thing?"

"No one could help thinking of it who saw her there—"

"And you didn't do it?"

"It wasn't consideration for her family that held me back."

"What was it?"

Pete found a moral scruple was a difficult motive to avow.

"It was Mathilde herself. That would not have been treating her as an equal."

"You intend always to treat her as an equal?"

Wayne was ashamed to find how difficult it was to answer truthfully. The tone of the question gave him no clue to the speaker's own thoughts.

"Yes, I do," he said; and then blurted out hastily, "Don't you believe in treating a woman as an equal?"

"I believe in treating her exactly as she wants to be treated."

"But every one wants to be treated as an equal, if they're any good." Farron smiled, showing those blue-white teeth for an instant, and Wayne, feeling he was not quite doing himself justice, added, "I call that just ordinary respect, you know, and I could not love any one I didn't respect. Could you?"

The question was, or Farron chose to consider it, a purely rhetorical one.

"I suppose," he observed, "that they are to be counted the most fortunate who love and respect at the same time."

"Of course," said Wayne.

Farron nodded.

"And yet perhaps they miss a good deal."

"I don't know what they miss," answered Wayne, to whom the sentiment was as shocking as anything not understood can be.

"No; I'm sure you don't," answered his future stepfather-in-law. "Go on with your story."

Wayne went on, but not as rapidly as he had expected. Farron kept him a long time on the interview of the afternoon before, and particularly on Mrs. Farron's part, just the point Wayne did not want to discuss for fear of betraying the bitterness he felt toward her. But again and again Farron made him quote her words wherever he could remember them; and then, as if this had not been clear enough, he asked:

"You think my wife has definitely made up her mind against the marriage?"

"Irrevocably."

"Irrevocably?" Farron questioned more as if it were the sound of the word than the meaning that he was doubting.

"Ah, you've been rather out of it lately, sir," said Wayne. "You haven't followed, perhaps, all that's been going on."

"Perhaps not."

Wayne felt he must be candid.

"If it is your idea that your wife's opposition could be changed, I'm afraid I must tell you, Mr. Farron—" He paused, meeting a quick, sudden look; then Farron turned his head, and stared, with folded arms, out of the window. Wayne had plenty of time to wonder what he was going to say. What he did say was surprising.

"I think you are an honest man, and I should be glad to have you working for me. I could make you one of my secretaries, with a salary of six thousand dollars."

In the shock Pete heard himself saying the first thing that came into his head:

"That's a large salary, sir."

"Some people would say large enough to marry on."

Wayne drew back.

"Don't you think you ought to consult Mrs. Farron before you offer it to me?" he asked hesitatingly.

"Don't carry honesty too far. No, I don't consult my wife about my office appointments."

"It isn't honesty; but I couldn't stand having you change your mind when—"

"When my wife tells me to? I promise you not to do that."

Wayne found that the interview was over, although he had not been able to express his gratitude.

"I know what you are feeling," said Farron. "Good-by."

"I can't understand why you are doing it, Mr. Farron; but—"

"It needn't matter to you. Good-by."

With a sensation that in another instant he might be out of the house, Wayne metaphorically caught at the door-post.

"I must see Mathilde before I go," he said.

Farron shook his head.

"No, not to-day."

"She's terribly afraid I am going to be moved by insults to desert her," Wayne urged.

"I'll see she understands. I'll send for you in a day or two; then it will be all right." They shook hands. He was glad Farron showed him out through the corridor and not through the study, where, he knew, Mrs. Farron was still waiting like a fine, sleek cat at a rat-hole.



CHAPTER XV

During this interview Adelaide sat in her husband's study and waited. She looked back upon that other period of suspense—the hour when she had waited at the hospital during his operation—as a time of comparative peace. She had been able then, she remembered, to sit still, to pursue, if not a train of thought, at least a set of connected images; but now her whole spirit seemed to be seething with a sort of poison that made her muscles jerk and start and her mind dart and faint. Then she had foreseen loss through the fate common to humanity; now she foresaw it through the action of her own tyrannical contempt for anything that seemed to her weak.

She had never rebelled against coercion from Vincent. She had even loved it, but she had loved it when he had seemed to her a superior being; coercion from one who only yesterday had been under the dominion of nerves and nurses was intolerable to her. She was at heart a courtier, would do menial service to a king, and refuse common civility to an inferior. She knew how St. Christopher had felt at seeing his satanic captain tremble at the sign of the cross; and though, unlike the saint, she had no intention of setting out to discover the stronger lord, she knew that he might now any day appear.

From any one not an acknowledged superior that shut door was an insult to be avenged, and she sat and waited for the moment to arrive when she would most adequately avenge it. There was still something terrifying in the idea of going out to do battle with Vincent. Hitherto in their quarrels he had always been the aggressor, had always startled her out of an innocent calm by an accusation or complaint. But this, as she said to herself, was not a quarrel, but a readjustment, of which probably he was still unaware. She hoped he was. She hoped he would come in with his accustomed manner and say civilly, "Forgive me for shutting the door; but my reason was—"

And she would answer, "Really, I don't think we need trouble about your reasons, Vincent." She knew just the tone she would use, just the expression of a smile suppressed. Then his quick eyes would fasten themselves on her face, and perhaps at the first glance would read the story of his defeat. She knew her own glance would not waver.

At the end of half an hour she heard the low tones of conversation change to the brisk notes of leave-taking. Her heart began to beat with fear, but not the kind of fear that makes people run away; rather the kind that makes them abdicate all reason and fan their emotions into a sort of inspiring flame.

She heard the door open into the corridor, but even then Vincent did not immediately come. Miss Gregory had been waiting to say good-by to him. As a case he was finished. Adelaide heard her clear voice say gaily:

"Well, I'm off, Mr. Vincent."

They went back into the room and shut the door. Adelaide clenched her hands; these delays were hard to bear.

It was not a long delay, though in that next room a very human bond was about to be broken. Possibly if Vincent had done exactly what his impulses prompted, he would have taken Miss Gregory in his arms and kissed her. But instead he said quietly, for his manner had not much range:

"I shall miss you."

"It's time I went."

"To some case more interestingly dangerous?"

"Your case was dangerous enough for me," said the girl; and then for fear he might miss her meaning, "I never met any one like you, Mr. Farron."

"I've never been taken care of as you took care of me."

"I wish"—she looked straight up at him—"I could take care of you altogether."

"That," he answered, "would end in my taking care of you."

"And your hands are pretty full as it is?"

He nodded, and she went away without even shaking hands. She omitted her farewells to any other member of the family except Pringle, who, Farron heard, was congratulating her on her consideration for servants as he put her into her taxi.

Then he opened the door of his study, went to the chair he had risen from, and took up the paper at the paragraph at which he had dropped it. Adelaide's eyes followed him like search-lights.

"May I ask," she said with her edged voice, "if you have been disposing of my child's future in there without consulting me?"

If their places had been reversed, Adelaide would have raised her eyebrows and repeated, "Your child's future?" but Farron was more direct.

"I have been engaging Wayne as a secretary," he said, and, turning to the financial page, glanced down the quotations.

"Then you must dismiss him again."

"He will be a useful man to me," said Farron, as if she had not spoken. "I have needed some one whom I could depend on—"

"Vincent, it is absurd for you to pretend you don't know he wanted to marry Mathilde."

He did not raise his eyes.

"Yes," he said; "I remember you and I had some talk about it before my operation."

"Since then circumstances have arisen of which you know nothing—things I did not tell you."

"Do you think that was wise?"

With a sense that a rapid and resistless current was carrying them both to destruction she saw for the first time that he was as angry as she.

"I do not like your tone," she said.

"What's the matter with it?"

"It isn't polite; it isn't friendly."

"Why should it be?"

"Why? What a question! Love—"

"I doubt if it is any longer a question of love between you and me."

These words, which so exactly embodied her own idea, came to her as a shock, a brutal blow from him.

"Vincent!" she cried protestingly.

"I don't know what it is that has your attention now, what private anxieties that I am not privileged to share—"

"You have been ill."

"But not imbecile. Do you suppose I've missed one tone of your voice, or haven't understood what has been going on in your mind? Have you lived with me five years and think me a forgiving man—"

"May I ask what you have to forgive?"

"Do you suppose a pat to my pillow or an occasional kind word takes the place to me of what our relation used to be?"

"You speak as if our relation was over."

"Have you been imagining I was going to come whining to you for a return of your love and respect? What nonsense! Love makes love, and indifference makes indifference."

"You expect me to say I am indifferent to you?"

"I care very little what you say. I judge your conduct."

She had an unerring instinct for what would wound him. If she had answered with conviction, "Yes, I am indifferent to you," there would have been enough temper and exaggeration in it for him to discount the whole statement. But to say, "No, I still love you, Vincent," in a tone that conceded the very utmost that she could,—namely, that she still loved him for the old, rather pitiful association,—that would be to inflict the most painful wound possible. And so that was what she said. She was prepared to have him take it up and cry: "You still love me? Do you mean as you love your Aunt Alberta?" and she, still trying to be just, would answer: "Oh, more than Aunt Alberta. Only, of course—"

The trouble was he did not make the right answer. When she said, "No, I still love you, Vincent," he answered:

"I cannot say the same."

It was one of those replies that change the face of the world. It drove every other idea out of her head. She stared at him for an instant.

"Nobody," she answered, "need tell me such a thing as that twice." It was a fine phrase to cover a retreat; she left him and went to her own room. It no more occurred to her to ask whether he meant what he said than if she had been struck in the head she would have inquired if the blow was real.

She did not come down to lunch. Vincent and Mathilde ate alone. Mathilde, as she told Pete, had begun to understand her stepfather, but she had not progressed so far as to see in his silence anything but an unapproachable sternness. It never crossed her mind that this middle-aged man, who seemed to control his life so completely, was suffering far more than she, and she was suffering a good deal.

Pete had promised to come that morning, and she hadn't seen him yet. She supposed he had come, and that, though she had been on the lookout for him, she had missed him. She felt as if they were never going to see each other again. When she found she was to be alone at luncheon with Farron, she thought of appealing to him, but was restrained by two considerations. She was a kind person, and her mother had repeatedly impressed upon her how badly at present Mr. Farron supported any anxiety. More important than this, however, was her belief that he would never work at cross-purposes with his wife. What were she and Pete to do? she thought. Mrs. Wayne would not take her in, her mother would not let Pete come to the house, and they had no money.

Both cups of soup left the table almost untasted.

"I'm sorry Mama has one of her headaches," said Mathilde.

"Yes," said Farron. "You'd better take some of that chicken, Mathilde. It's very good."

She did not notice that the piece he had taken on his own plate was untouched.

"I'm not hungry," she answered.

"Anything wrong?"

She could not lie, and so she looked at him and smiled and answered:

"Nothing, as Mama would say, to trouble an invalid with."

She did not have a great success. In fact, his brows showed a slight disposition to contract, and after a moment of silence he said:

"Does your mother say that?"

"She's always trying to protect you nowadays, Mr. Farron."

"I saw your friend Pete Wayne this morning."

"You saw—" Surprise, excitement, alarm flooded her face with crimson. "Oh, why did you see him?"

"I saw him by appointment. He asked me to tell you—only, I'm afraid, other things put it out of my head—that he has accepted a job I offered him."

"O Mr. Farron, what kind of job?"

"Well, the kind of job that would enable two self-denying young people to marry, I think."

Not knowing how clearly all that she felt was written on her face Mathilde tried to put it all into words.

"How wonderful! how kind! But my mother—"

"I will arrange it with your mother."

"Have you known all along? Oh, why did you do this wonderful thing?"

"Because—perhaps you won't agree with me—I have taken rather a fancy to this young man. And I had other reasons."

Mathilde took her stepfather's hand as it lay upon the table.

"I've only just begun to understand you, Mr. Farron. To understand, I mean, what Mama means when she says you are the strongest, wisest person—"

He pretended to smile.

"When did your mother say that?"

"Oh, ages ago." She stopped, aware of a faint motion to withdraw on the part of the hand she held. "I suppose you want to go to her."

"No. The sort of headache she has is better left alone, I think, though you might stop as you go up."

"I will. When do you think I can see Pete?"

"I'd wait a day or two; but you might telephone him at once, if you like, and say—or do you know what to say?"

She laughed.

"It used to frighten me when you made fun of me like that; but now—It must be simply delirious to be able to make people as happy as you've just made us."

He smiled at her word.

"Other people's happiness is not exactly delirious," he said.

She was moving in the direction of the nearest telephone, but she said over her shoulder:

"Oh, well, I think you did pretty well for yourself when you chose Mama."

She left him sipping his black coffee; he took every drop of that.

When he had finished he did not go back to his study, but to the drawing-room, where he sat down in a large chair by the fire. He lit a cigar. It was a quiet hour in the house, and he might have been supposed to be a man entirely at peace.

Mr. Lanley, coming in about an hour later, certainly imagined he was rousing an invalid from a refreshing rest. He tried to retreat, but found Vincent's black eyes were on him.

"I'm sorry to disturb you," he said. "Just wanted to see Adelaide."

"Adelaide has a headache."

Life was taking so many wrong turnings that Mr. Lanley had grown apprehensive. He suddenly remembered how many headaches Adelaide had had just before he knew of her troubles with Severance.

"A headache?" he said nervously.

"Nothing serious." Vincent looked more closely at his father-in-law. "You yourself don't look just the thing, sir."

Mr. Lanley sat down more limply than was his custom.

"I'm getting to an age," he said, "when I can't stand scenes. We had something of a scene here yesterday afternoon. God bless my soul! though, I believe Adelaide told me not to mention it to you."

"Adelaide is very considerate," replied her husband. His extreme susceptibility to sorrow made Mr. Lanley notice a tone which ordinarily would have escaped him, and he looked up so sharply that Farron was forced to add quickly: "But you haven't made a break. I know about what took place."

The egotism of suffering, the distorted vision of a sleepless night, made Mr. Lanley blurt out suddenly:

"I want to ask you, Vincent, do you think I could have done anything different?"

Now, none of the accounts which Farron had received had made any mention of Mr. Lanley's part in the proceedings at all, and so he paused a moment, and in that pause Mr. Lanley went on:

"It's a difficult position—before a boy's mother. There isn't anything against him, of course. One's reasons for not wanting the marriage do sound a little snobbish when one says them—right out. In fact, I suppose they are snobbish. Do you find it hard to get away from early prejudices, Vincent? I do. I think Adelaide is quite right; and yet the boy is a nice boy. What do you think of him?"

"I have taken him into my office."

Mr. Lanley was startled by a courage so far beyond his own.

"But," he asked, "did you consult Adelaide?"

Farron shook his head.

"But, Vincent, was that quite loyal?"

A change in Farron's expression made Mr. Lanley turn his head, and he saw that Adelaide had come into the room. Her appearance bore out the legend of her headache: she looked like a garden after an early frost. But perhaps the most terrifying thing about her aspect was her complete indifference to it. A recollection suddenly came to Mr. Lanley of a railway accident that he and Adelaide had been in. He had seen her stepping toward him through the debris, buttoning her gloves. She was far beyond such considerations now.

She had come to put her very life to the test. There was one hope, there was one way in which Vincent could rehabilitate himself, and that was by showing himself victor in the hardest of all struggles, the personal struggle with her. That would be hard, because she would make it so, if she perished in the attempt.

The crisis came in the first meeting of their eyes. If his glance had said: "My poor dear, you're tired. Rest. All will be well," his cause would have been lost. But his glance said nothing, only studied her coolly, and she began to speak.

"Oh, Papa, Vincent does not consider such minor points as loyalty to me." Her voice and manner left Mr. Lanley in no doubt that if he stayed an instant he would witness a domestic quarrel. The idea shocked him unspeakably. That these two reserved and dignified people should quarrel at all was bad enough, but that they should have reached a point where they were indifferent to the presence of a third person was terrible. He got himself out of the room without ceremony, but not before he saw Vincent rise and heard the first words of his sentence:

"And what right have you to speak of loyalty?" Here, fortunately, Lanley shut the door behind him, for Vincent's next words would have shocked him still more: "A prostitute would have stuck better to a man when he was ill."

But Adelaide was now in good fighting trim. She laughed out loud.

"Really, Vincent," she said, "your language! You must make your complaint against me a little more definite."

"Not much; and give you a chance to get up a little rational explanation. Besides, we neither of us need explanations. We know what has been happening."

"You mean you really doubt my feeling for you? No, Vincent, I still love you," and her voice had a flute-like quality which, though it was without a trace of conviction, very few people who had ever heard it had resisted.

"I am aware of that," said Vincent quietly.

She looked beautifully dazed.

"Yet this morning you spoke—as if—"

"But what is love such as yours worth? A man must be on the crest of the wave to keep it; otherwise it changes automatically into contempt. I don't care about it, Adelaide. I can't use it in a life like mine."

She looked at him, and a dreamlike state began to come over her. She simply couldn't believe in the state of mind of those sick-room days; she could never really, she thought, have been less passionately admiring than she was at that minute, yet the half-recollection confused her and kept her silent.

"Perhaps it's vanity on my part," he said, "but contempt like yours is something I could never forgive."

"You would forgive me anything if you loved me." Her tone was noble and sincere.

"Perhaps."

"You mean you don't?"

"Adelaide, there are times when a person chooses between loving and being loved."

The sentence made her feel sick with fear, but she asked:

"Tell me just what you mean."

"Perhaps I could keep on loving you if I shut my eyes to the kind of person you are; but if I did that, I could not hold you an instant."

She stared at him as fascinated as a bird by a snake. This, it seemed to her, was the truth, the final summing up of their relation. She had lost him, and yet she was eternally his.

As she looked at him she became aware that he was growing slowly pale. He was standing, and he put his hand out to the mantelpiece to steady himself. She thought he was going to faint.

"Vincent," she said, "let me help you to the sofa."

She wanted now to see him falter, to feel his hand on her shoulder, anything for a closer touch with him. For half a minute, perhaps, they remained motionless, and then the color began to come back into his face.

He smiled bitterly.

"They tell me you are such a good sick nurse, Mrs. Farron," he said, "so considerate to the weak. But I don't need your help, thank you."

She covered her face with her hands. He seemed to her stronger and more cruel than anything she had imagined. In a minute he left her alone.



CHAPTER XVI

Farron cared, perhaps, no more for appearances than Adelaide did, but his habitual manner was much better adapted to concealment. In him the fluctuations between the deepest depression and the highest elation were accompanied by such slight variations of look and tone that they escaped almost every one but Adelaide herself. He came down to dinner that evening, and while Adelaide sat in silence, with her elbows on the table and her long fingers clasping and unclasping themselves in a sort of rhythmic desperation, conversation went on pleasantly enough between Mathilde and Vincent. This was facilitated by the fact that Mathilde had now transferred to Vincent the flattering affection which she used to give to her grandfather. She agreed with, wondered at, and drank in every word.

Naturally, Mathilde attributed her mother's distress to the crisis in her own love-affairs. She had had no word with her as to Wayne's new position, and it came to her in a flash that it would be daring, but wise, to take the matter up in the presence of her stepfather. So, as soon as they were in the drawing-room, and Farron had opened the evening paper, and his wife, with a wild decision, had opened a book, Mathilde ruthlessly interrupted them both, recalling them from what appeared to be the depths of absorptions in their respective pages by saying:

"Mr. Farron, did you tell Mama what you had done about Pete?"

Farron raised his eyes and said:

"Yes."

"And what did she say?"

"What is there for me to say?" answered Adelaide in the terrible, crisp voice that Mathilde hated.

There was a pause. To Mathilde it seemed extraordinary the way older people sometimes stalled and shifted about perfectly obvious issues; but, wishing to be patient, she explained:

"Don't you see it makes some difference in our situation?"

"The greatest, I should think," said Adelaide, and just hinted that she might go back to her book at any instant.

"But don't you think—" Mathilde began again, when Farron interrupted her almost sharply.

"Mathilde," he said, "there's a well-known business axiom, not to try to get things on paper too early."

She bent her head a trifle on one side in the way a puppy will when an unusual strain is being put upon its faculties. It seemed to her curious, but she saw she was being advised to drop the subject. Suddenly Adelaide sprang to her feet and said she was going to bed.

"I hope your headache will be better, Mama," Mathilde hazarded; but Adelaide went without answering. Mathilde looked at Mr. Farron.

"You haven't learned to wait," he said.

"It's so hard to wait when you are on bad terms with people you love!"

She was surprised that he smiled—a smile that conveyed more pain than amusement.

"It is hard," he said.

This closed the evening. The next morning Vincent went down-town. He went about half-past ten. Adelaide, breakfasting in her room and dressing at her leisure, did not appear until after eleven, and then discovered for the first time that her husband had gone. She was angry at Mathilde, who had breakfasted with him, at Pringle, for not telling her what was happening.

"You shouldn't have let him go, Mathilde," she said. "You are old enough to have some judgment in such matters. He is not strong enough. He almost fainted yesterday."

"But, Mama," protested the girl, "I could not stop Mr. Farron. I don't think even you could have if he'd made up his mind."

"Tell Pringle to order the motor at once," was her mother's answer.

Her distraction at her husband's imprudence touched Mathilde so that she forgot everything else between them.

"O Mama," she said, "I'm so sorry you're worried! I'm sorry I'm one of your worries; but don't you see I love Pete just as you do Mr. Farron?"

"God help you, then!" said Adelaide, quickly, and went to her room to put on with a haste none the less meticulous her small velvet hat, her veil, her spotless, pale gloves, her muff, and warm coat.

She drove to Vincent's office. It was not really care for his health that drove her, but the restlessness of despair; she had reached a point where she was more wretched away from him than with him.

The office was high in a gigantic building. Every one knew her by sight, the giant at the door and the men in the elevators. Once in the office itself, a junior partner hurried to her side.

"So glad to see Vincent back again," he said, proud of the fact that he called his present partner and late employer by his first name. "You want to see him?" There was a short hesitation. "He left word not to be disturbed—"

"Who is there?" Adelaide asked.

"Dr. Parret."

"He's not been taken ill?"

He tried to reassure her, but Adelaide, without waiting or listening, moved at once to Vincent's door and opened it. As she did so she heard, him laughing and then she saw that he was laughing at the words of the handsomest woman she had ever seen. A great many people had this first impression of Lily Parret. Lily was standing on the opposite side of the table from him, leaning with both palms flat on the polished wood, telling him some continued narrative that made her blue eyes shine and her dimples deepen.

Adelaide was not temperamentally jealous. She did not, like Vincent, hate and fear any person or thing or idea that drew his attention away; on the contrary, she wanted him to give his full attention to anything that would make for his power and success. She was not jealous, but it did cross her mind that she was looking now at her successor.

They stopped laughing as she entered, and Vincent said:

"Thank you, Dr. Parret, you have given me just what I wanted."

"Marty would just as lief as not stick a knife in me if he knew," said Lily, not as if she were afraid, but as if this was one of the normal risks of her profession. She turned to Adelaide, "O Mrs. Farron, I've heard of you from Pete Wayne. Isn't he perfectly delightful? But, then, he ought to be with such a mother."

Adelaide had a very useful smile, which could maintain a long, but somewhat meaningless, brilliance. She employed it now, and it lasted until Lily had gone.

"That's a very remarkable girl," said Farron, remembrances of smiles still on his lips.

"Does she think every one perfect?"

"Almost every one; that's how she keeps going at such a rate."

"How long have you known her?"

"About ten minutes. Pete got her here. She knew something about Marty that I needed." He spoke as if he was really interested in the business before him; he did not betray by so much as a glance the recognition that they were alone, though she was calling his attention to the fact by every line of her figure and expression of her face. She saw his hand move on his desk. Was it coming to hers? He rang a bell. "Is Burke in the outer office? Send him in."

Adelaide's heart began to beat as Marty, in his working-clothes, entered. He was more suppressed and more sulky than she had yet seen him.

"I've been trying to see you, Mr. Farron," he began; but Vincent cut in:

"One moment, Burke. I have something to say to you. That bout you said you had with O'Hallohan—"

"Well, what of it?" answered Marty, suddenly raising his voice.

"He knocked you out."

"Who says so?" roared Burke.

"He knocked you out," repeated Vincent.

"Who says so?" Burke roared again, and somehow there was less confidence in the same volume of sound.

"Well, not O'Hallohan; He stayed bought. But I have it straight. No, I'm not trying to draw you out on a guess. I don't play that kind of game. If I tell you I know it for a fact, I do."

"Well, and what of it?" said Marty.

"Just this. I wouldn't dismiss a man for getting knocked out by a bigger man—"

"He ain't bigger."

"By a better fighter, then; but I doubt whether or not I want a foreman who has to resort to that kind of thing—to buying off the man who licked—"

"I didn't buy him off," said Burke, as if he knew the distinction, even in his own mind, was a fine one.

"Oh, yes, you did," answered Farron. And getting up, with his hands in his pockets, he added, "I'm afraid your usefulness to me is over, Burke."

"The hell it is!"

"My wife is here, Marty," said Farron, very pleasantly. "But this story isn't the only thing I have against you. My friend Mrs. Wayne tells me you are exerting a bad influence over a fellow whose marriage she wants to get annulled."

"Oh, let 'em get it annulled!" shouted Marty on a high and rising key. "What do I care? I'll do anything to oblige if I'm asked right; but when Mrs. Wayne and that gang come around bullying me, I won't do a thing for them. But, if you ask me to, Mr. Farron, why, I'm glad to oblige you."

"Thank you, Marty," returned his employer, cordially. "If you arrange that for me, I must own it would make me feel differently. I tell you," he added, as one who suggests an honorable compromise, "you get that settled up, you get that marriage annulled—that is, if you think you can—"

"Sure I can," Burke replied, swaying his body about from the waist up, as if to indicate the ease with which it could be accomplished.

"Well, when that's done, come back, and we'll talk over the other matter. Perhaps, after all—well, we'll talk it over."

Burke walked to the door with his usual conquering step, but there turned.

"Say," he said, "that story about the fight—" He looked at Adelaide. "Ladies don't always understand these matters. Tell her, will you, that it's done in some first-class fights?"

"I'll explain," answered Vincent.

"And there ain't any use in the story's getting about," Burke added.

"It won't," said Vincent. On which assurance Marty went away and left the husband and wife alone.

Adelaide got up and went to the window and looked out toward the Palisades. Marty Burke had been a symbol that enabled her to recall some of her former attitudes of mind. She remembered that dinner where she had pitted him against her husband. She felt deeply humiliated in her own sight and in Vincent's, for she was now ready to believe that he had read her mind from the beginning. It seemed to her as if she had been mad, and in that madness had thrown away the only thing in the world she would ever value. The thought of acknowledging her fault was not repugnant to her; she had no special objection to groveling, but she knew it would do no good. Vincent, though not ungenerous, saw clearly; and he had summed up the situation in that terrible phrase about choosing between loving and being loved. "I suppose I shouldn't respect him much if he did forgive me," she thought; and suddenly she felt his arms about her; he snatched her to him, turned her face to his, calling her by strange, unpremeditated terms of endearment. Beyond these, no words at all were exchanged between them; they were undesired. Adelaide did not know whether it were servile or superb to care little about knowing his opinion and intentions in regard to her. All that she cared about was that in her eyes he was once more supreme and that his arms were about her. Words, she knew, would have been her enemies, and she did not make use of them.

When they went out, they passed Wayne in the outer office.

"Come to dinner to-night, Pete," said Farron, and added, turning to his wife, "That's all right, isn't it, Adelaide?"

She indicated that it was perfect, like everything he did.

Wayne looked at his future mother-in-law in surprise. His pride had been unforgetably stung by some of her sentences, but he could have forgiven those more easily than the easy smile with which she now nodded at her husband's invitation, as if a pleasant intention on her part could wipe out everything that had gone before. That, it seemed to him, was the very essence of insolence.

Appreciating that some sort of doubt was disturbing him, Adelaide said most graciously:

"Yes, you really must come, Mr. Wayne."

At this moment Farron's own stenographer, Chandler, approached him with an unsigned letter in his hand.

Chandler took the routine of the office more seriously than Farron did, and acquired thereby a certain power over his employer. He had something of the attitude of a child's nurse, who, knowing that her charge has almost passed beyond her care, recognizes that she has no authority except that bestowed by devotion.

"I think you meant to sign this letter, Mr. Farron," he said, just as a nurse might say before strangers, "You weren't going to the party without washing your hands?"

"Oh." Farron fished in his waistcoat for his pen, and while he was writing, and Chandler just keeping an eye on him to see that it was done right, Adelaide said:

"And how is Mrs. Chandler?"

Chandler's face lit up as he received the letter back.

"Oh, much better, thank you, Mrs. Farron—out of all danger."

Wayne saw, what Chandler did not, that Adelaide had never even heard of Mrs. Chandler's ill health; but she murmured as she turned away:

"I'm so glad. You must have been very anxious."

When they were gone, Wayne and Chandler were left a minute alone.

"What a personality!" Chandler exclaimed. "Imagine her remembering my troubles, when you think what she has had to worry about! A remarkable couple, Mr. Wayne. I have been up to the house a number of times since Mr. Farron's illness, and she is always there, so brave, so attentive. A queenly woman, and," he added, as if the two did not always go together, "a good wife."

Wayne could think of no answer to this eulogy, and as they stood in silence the office door opened and Mr. Lanley came in. He nodded to each of the two, and moved to Vincent's room.

"Mr. Farron has just gone," said Chandler, firmly. He could not bear to have people running in and out of Farron's room.

"Gone?" said Lanley, as if it were somebody's fault.

"Mrs. Farron came down for him in the motor. He appeared to stand his first day very well."

Mr. Lanley glanced quickly from one to the other. This did not sound as if any final break had occurred between the Farrons, yet on this subject he could hardly question his son-in-law's secretaries. He made one further effort.

"I suppose Mr. Farron thought he was good for a whole day's work."

Chandler smiled.

"Mr. Farron, like all wise men, sir, does what his wife tells him." And then, as he loved his own work far more than conversation, Chandler hurried back to his desk.

"I understand," said Lanley to Wayne, "that you are here regularly now."

"Yes."

"Like your work?" Lanley was obviously delaying, hoping that some information would turn up unexpectedly.

"Very much."

"Humph! What does your mother think about it?"

"About my new job?" Wayne smiled. "You know those aren't the kind of facts—jobs and salaries—that my mother scrutinizes very closely."

Lanley stared at him with brows slightly contracted.

"What does she scrutinize?" he asked.

"Oh, motives—spiritual things."

"I see." Mr. Lanley couldn't go a step further, couldn't take this young man into his confidence an inch further. He stuck his stick into his overcoat-pocket so that it stood upright, and wheeled sharply.

"Good-by," he said, and added at the door, "I suppose you think this makes a difference in your prospects."

"Mrs. Farron has asked me to come to dinner to-night."

Lanley wheeled back again.

"What?" he said.

"Yes, she almost urged me, though I didn't need urging."

Lanley didn't answer, but presently went out in silence. He was experiencing the extreme loneliness that follows being more royalist than the king.



CHAPTER XVII

On Mondays and Thursdays, the only days Mr. Lanley went down-town, he expected to have the corner table at the restaurant where he always lunched and where, on leaving Farron's office, he went. He had barely finished ordering luncheon—oyster stew, cold tongue, salad, and a bottle of Rhine wine—when, looking up, he saw Wilsey was approaching him, beaming.

"Haryer, Wilsey?" he said, without cordiality.

Wilsey, it fortunately appeared, had already had his midday meal, and had only a moment or two to give to sociability.

"Haven't seen you since that delightful evening," he murmured. "I hope Mrs. Baxter got my card." He mentioned his card as if it had been a gift, not munificent, but not negligible, either.

"Suppose she got it if you left it," said Mr. Lanley, who had heard her comment on it. "My man's pretty good at that sort of thing."

"Ah, how rare they are getting!" said Wilsey, with a sigh—"good servants. Upon my word, Lanley, I'm almost ready to go."

"Because you can't get good servants?" said his friend, who was drumming on the table and looking blankly about.

"Because all the old order is passing, all the standards and backgrounds that I value. I don't think I'm a snob—"

"Of course you're a snob, Wilsey."

Mr. Wilsey smiled temperately.

"What do you mean by the word?"

It was a question about which Lanley had been thinking, and he answered:

"I mean a person who values himself for qualities that have no moral, financial, or intellectual value whatsoever. You, for instance, Wilsey, value yourself not because you are a pretty good lawyer, but because your great-grandfather signed the Declaration."

A shade of slight embarrassment crossed the lawyer's face.

"I own," he said, "that I value birth, but so do you, Lanley. You attach importance to being a New York Lanley."

"I do," answered Lanley; "but I have sense enough to be ashamed of doing so. You're proud of being proud of your old Signer."

"As a matter of fact," Mr. Wilsey remarked slowly, "Josiah Wilsey did not sign the Declaration."

"What!" cried Lanley. "You've always told me he did."

Wilsey shook his head gently, as one who went about correcting errors.

"No. What I said was that I feel no moral doubt he would have signed it if an attack of illness—"

Lanley gave a short roar.

"That's just like you, Wilsey. You wouldn't have signed it, either. You would have said that while in cordial sympathy with the ideas set forth, you would not care to put your name to a document that might give pain to a monarch who, though not as liberal as some of us could wish, was yet—"

"As a matter of fact," Wilsey began again even more coldly, "I should have signed—"

"Oh, you think so now. A hundred years from now you'd sign a petition for the eight-hour law."

"Never!" said Wilsey, raising his hand. "I should never put my name to a document—" He stopped at another roar from his friend, and never took the sentence up again, but indicated with a gesture that only legal minds were worth arguing with on points of this sort.

When he had gone, Lanley dipped the spoon in his oyster stew with not a little pleasure. Nothing, apparently, could have raised his spirits more than the knowledge that old Josiah Wilsey had not signed the Declaration. He actually chuckled a little. "So like Wilsey himself," he thought. "No moral courage; calls it conservatism." Then his joy abated. Just so, he thought, must he himself appear to Mrs. Wayne. Yet his self-respect insisted that his case was different. Loyalty had been responsible not for his conservatism, but for the pig-headedness with which he had acted upon it. He would have asked nothing better than to profess himself open-minded to Mrs. Wayne's views, only he could not desert Adelaide in the moment of her struggle for beliefs in which he himself had brought her up. And now she had deserted him. He alone was left to flaunt a banner the motto of which he didn't wholly believe, while Adelaide, at a word from Vincent, had gone over to the other side. And no one knew what his loyalty had cost him. Long ago, in his first year at college, he had flunked the examination of the professor whom he reverenced above all others. No one had cared, no one had long remembered, except Lanley himself, and he had remembered because some one had told him what the professor said on reading his paper. It was nothing but, "I had supposed Lanley was intelligent." Never again had he had that professor's attention for a single instant. This, it seemed to him, was about to happen to him again, now when it was too late in his life to do anything but despair.

He called the waiter, paid his bill and tip,—he was an extremely liberal tipper; "it's expected of us," he used to say, meaning that it was expected of people like the New York Lanleys,—and went away.

In old times he had been an inventor of many clever tricks for getting up-town by unpopular elevated trains and horse-cars that avoided the crowd, but the subway was a great leveler, and he knew no magic except to take a local in rush hours. At three o'clock, however, even this was not necessary. He took an express, and got off at the Grand Central, turned up Park Avenue, and then east. He had just found out that he was going to visit Mrs. Wayne.

He read the names in the vestibule, never doubting that Dr. Parret was a masculine practitioner, and hesitated at the name of Wayne. He thought he ought to ring the bell, but he wanted to go straight up. Some one had left the front door unlatched. He pushed it open and began the steep ascent.

She came to the door of the flat herself. She had a funny little gray shawl about her shoulders and a pen in her hand. She tried to make her voice sound very cordial as she greeted him, but he thought he caught something that sounded as if, while perfectly well disposed to him, she couldn't for the life of her imagine why he had come.

"Come in," she said, "though I'm afraid it's a little cold in here. Our janitor—"

"Let me light your fire for you," he answered, and extracting a parlor-match from his pocket,—safety-matches were his bugbear,—he stooped, and put the flame to the fire. As he did so he understood that it was not the mere forgetfulness of a servant that had left it unlighted, but probably a deliberate economy, and he rose crimson and unhappy.

It took him some time to recover, and during the entire time she sat in her gray shawl, looking very amiable, but plainly unable to think of anything to say.

"I saw your son in Farron's office to-day."

"Mr. Farron has been so kind, so wonderfully kind!"

Only a guilty conscience could have found reproach in this statement, and Lanley said:

"And I hear he is dining at my daughter's this evening."

Mrs. Wayne had had a telephone message to that effect.

"I wondered, if you were alone—" Lanley hesitated. He had of course been going to ask her to come and dine with him, but a better inspiration came to him. "I wondered if you would ask me to dine with you."

"Oh, I'm so sorry," said Mrs. Wayne, "but I can't. I have a boy coming. He's studying for the ministry, the most interesting person. He had not been sober for three years when I took hold of him, and now he hasn't touched a drop for two."

He sighed. She said she was sorry, but he could see plainly enough that any reformed, or even more any unreformed, drunkard would always far surpass him in ability to command her interest. He did not belong to a generation that cleared things up with words; he would have thought it impertinent, almost ungentlemanly, to probe her attitude of mind about the scene at Adelaide's; and he would have considered himself unmanly to make any plea to her on the ground of his own suffering. One simply supported such things as best one could; it was expected of one, like tipping waiters. He had neither the vocabulary nor the habit of mind that made an impersonal exposition of an emotional difficulty possible; but even had he possessed these powers he would have retained his tradition against using them. Perhaps, if she had been his sister or his wife, he might have admitted that he had had a hard day or that every one had moments of depression; but that was not the way to talk in a lady's drawing-room. In the silence he saw her eyes steal longingly to her writing-table, deeply and hopelessly littered with papers and open books.

"I'm afraid I'm detaining you," he said. The visit had been a failure.

"Oh, not at all," she replied, and then added in a tone of more sincerity: "I do have the most terrible time with my check-book. And," she added, as one confessing to an absurdly romantic ideal, "I was trying to balance it."

"You should not be troubled with such things," said Mr. Lanley, thinking how long it was since any one but a secretary had balanced his books.

Pete, it appeared, usually did attend to his mother's checks, but of late she had not liked to bother him, and that was just the moment the bank had chosen to notify her that she had overdrawn. "I don't see how I can be," she said, too hopeless to deny it.

"If you would allow me," said Mr. Lanley. "I am an excellent bookkeeper."

"Oh, I shouldn't like to trouble you," said Mrs. Wayne, but she made it clear she would like it above everything; so Lanley put on his spectacles, drew up his chair, and squared his elbows to the job.

"It hasn't been balanced since—dear me! not since October," he said.

"I know; but I draw such small checks."

"But you draw a good many."

She had risen, and was standing before the fire, with her hands behind her back. Her shawl had slipped off, and she looked, in her short walking-skirt, rather like a school-girl being reprimanded for a poor exercise. She felt so when, looking up at her over his spectacles, he observed severely:

"You really must be more careful about carrying forward. Twice you have carried forward an amount from two pages back instead of—"

"That's always the way," she interrupted. "Whenever people look at my check-book they take so long scolding me about the way I do it that there's no time left for putting it right."

"I won't say another word," returned Lanley; "only it would really help you—"

"I don't want any one to do it who says my sevens are like fours," she went on. Lanley compressed his lips slightly, but contented himself by merely lengthening the tail of a seven. He said nothing more, but every time he found an error he gave a little shake of his head that went through her like a knife.

The task was a long one. The light of the winter afternoon faded, and she lit the lamps before he finished. At first he had tried not to be aware of revelations that the book made; but as he went on and he found he was obliged now and then to question her about payments and receipts, he saw that she was so utterly without any sense of privacy in the matter that his own decreased.

He had never thought of her as being particularly poor, not at least in the sense of worrying over every bill, but now when he saw the small margin between the amounts paid in and the amounts paid out, when he noticed how large a proportion of what she had she spent in free gifts and not in living expenses, he found himself facing something he could not tolerate. He put his pen down carefully in the crease of the book, and rose to his feet.

"Mrs. Wayne," he said, "I must tell you something."

"You're going to say, after all, that my sevens are like fours."

"I'm going to say something worse—more inexcusable. I'm going to tell you how much I want you to honor me by becoming my wife."

She pronounced only one syllable. She said, "Oh!" as crowds say it when a rocket goes off.

"I suppose you think it ridiculous in a man of my age to speak of love, but it's not ridiculous, by Heaven! It's tragic. I shouldn't have presumed, though, to mention the subject to you, only it is intolerable to me to think of your lacking anything when I have so much. I can't explain why this knowledge gave me courage. I know that you care nothing for luxuries and money, less than any one I know; but the fact that you haven't everything that you ought to have makes me suffer so much that I hope you will at least listen to me."

"But you know it doesn't make me suffer a bit," said Mrs. Wayne.

"To know you at all has been such a happiness that I am shocked at my own presumption in asking for your companionship for the rest of my life, and if in addition to that I could take care of you, share with you—"

No one ever presented a proposition to Mrs. Wayne without finding her willing to consider it, an open-mindedness that often led her into the consideration of absurdities. And now the sacred cupidity of the reformer did for an instant leap up within her. All the distressed persons, all the tottering causes in which she was interested, seemed to parade before her eyes. Then, too, the childish streak in her character made her remember how amusing it would be to be Adelaide Farron's mother-in-law, and Peter's grandmother by marriage. Nor was she at all indifferent to the flattery of the offer or the touching reserves of her suitor's nature.

"I should think you would be so lonely!" he said gently.

She nodded.

"I am often. I miss not having any one to talk to over the little things that"—she laughed—"I probably wouldn't talk over if I had some one. But even with Pete I am lonely. I want to be first with some one again."

"You will always be first with me."

"Even if I don't marry you?"

"Whatever you do."

Like the veriest coquette, she instantly decided to take all and give nothing—to take his interest, his devotion, his loyalty, all of the first degree, and give him in return a divided interest, a loyalty too much infected by humor to be complete, and a devotion in which several causes and Pete took precedence. She did not do this in ignorance. On the contrary, she knew just how it would be; that he would wait and she be late, that he would adjust himself and she remain unchanged, that he would give and give and she would never remember that it would be kind some day to ask. Yet it did not seem to her an unfair bargain, and perhaps she was right.

"I couldn't marry you," she said. "I couldn't change. All your pretty things and the way you live—it would be like a cage to me. I like my life the way it is; but yours—"

"Do you think I would ask Wilsey to dinner every night or try to mold you to be like Mrs. Baxter?"

She laughed.

"You'd have a hard time. I never could have married again. I'd make you a poor wife, but I'm a wonderful friend."

"Your friendship would be more happiness than I had any right to hope for," and then he added in a less satisfied tone: "But friendship is so uncertain. You don't make any announcements to your friends or vows to each other, unless you're at an age when you cut your initials in the bark of a tree. That's what I'd like to do. I suppose you think I'm an old fool."

"Two of us," said Mrs. Wayne, and wiped her eyes. She cried easily, and had never felt the least shame about it.

It was a strange compact—strange at least for her, considering that only a few hours before she had thought of him as a friendly, but narrow-minded, old stranger. Something weak and malleable in her nature made her enter lightly into the compact, although all the time she knew that something more deeply serious and responsible would never allow her to break it. A faint regret for even an atom of lost freedom, a vein of caution and candor, made her say:

"I'm so afraid you'll find me unsatisfactory. Every one has, even Pete."

"I think I shall ask less than any one," he returned.

The answer pleased her strangely.

Presently a ring came at the bell—a telegram. The expected guest was detained at the seminary. Lanley watched with agonized attention. She appeared to be delighted.

"Now you'll stay to dine," she said. "I can't remember what there is for dinner."

"Now, that's not friendly at the start," said he, "to think I care so much."

"Well, you're not like a theological student."

"A good deal better, probably," answered Lanley, with a gruffness that only partly hid his happiness. There was no real cloud in his sky. If Mrs. Wayne had accepted his offer of marriage, by this time he would have begun to think of the horror of telling Adelaide and Mathilde and his own servants. Now he thought of nothing but the agreeable evening before him, one of many.

When Pete came in to dress, Lanley was just in the act of drawing the last neat double lines for his balance. He had been delayed by the fact that Mrs. Wayne had been talking to him almost continuously since his return to figuring. She was in high spirits, for even saints are stimulated by a respectful adoration.



CHAPTER XVIII

Recognizing the neat back of Mr. Lanley's gray head, Pete's first idea was that he must have come to induce Mrs. Wayne to conspire with him against the marriage; but he abandoned this notion on seeing his occupation.

"Hullo, Mr. Lanley," he said, stooping to kiss his mother with the casual affection of the domesticated male. "You have my job."

"It is a great pleasure to be of any service," said Mr. Lanley.

"It was in a terrible state, it seems, Pete," said his mother.

"She makes her fours just like sevens, doesn't she?" observed Pete.

"I did not notice the similarity," replied Mr. Lanley. He glanced at Mrs. Wayne, however, and enjoyed his denial almost as much as he had enjoyed the discovery that the Wilsey ancestor had not been a Signer. He felt that somehow, owing to his late-nineteenth-century tact, the breach between him and Pete had been healed.

"Mr. Lanley is going to stay and dine with me," said Mrs. Wayne.

Pete looked a little grave, but his next sentence explained the cause of his anxiety.

"Wouldn't you like me to go out and get something to eat, Mother?"

"No, no," answered his mother, firmly. "This time there really is something in the house quite good. I don't remember what it is."

And then Pete, who felt he had done his duty, went off to dress. Soon, however, his voice called from an adjoining room.

"Hasn't that woman sent back any of my collars, Mother dear?"

"O Pete, her daughter got out of the reformatory only yesterday," Mrs. Wayne replied. Lanley saw that the Wayne housekeeping was immensely complicated by crime. "I believe I am the only person in your employ not a criminal," he said, closing the books. "These balance now."

"Have I anything left?"

"Only about a hundred and fifty."

She brightened at this.

"Oh, come," she said, "that's not so bad. I couldn't have been so terribly overdrawn, after all."

"You ought not to overdraw at all," said Mr. Lanley, severely. "It's not fair to the bank."

"Well, I never mean to," she replied, as if no one could ask more than that.

Presently she left him to go and dress for dinner. He felt extraordinarily at home, left alone like this among her belongings. He wandered about looking at the photographs—photographs of Pete as a child, a photograph of an old white house with wisteria-vines on it; a picture of her looking very much as she did now, with Pete as a little boy, in a sailor suit, leaning against her; and then a little photograph of her as a girl not much older than Mathilde, he thought—a girl who looked a little frightened and awkward, as girls so often looked, and yet to whom the French photographer—for it was taken in the Place de la Madeleine—had somehow contrived to give a Parisian air. He had never thought of her in Paris. He took the picture up; it was dated May, 1884. He thought back carefully. Yes, he had been in Paris himself that spring, a man of thirty-three or so, feeling as old almost as he did to-day, a widower with his little girl. If only they might have met then, he and that serious, starry-eyed girl in the photograph!

Hearing Pete coming, he set the photograph back in its place, and, sitting down, picked up the first paper within reach.

"Good night, sir," said Pete from the doorway.

"Good night, my dear boy. Good luck!" They shook hands.

"Funny old duck," Pete thought as he went down-stairs whistling, "sitting there so contentedly reading 'The Harvard Lampoon.' Wonder what he thinks of it."

He did not wonder long, though, for more interesting subjects of consideration were at hand. What reception would he meet at the Farrons? What arrangements would be made, what assumptions permitted? But even more immediate than this was the problem how could he contrive to greet Mrs. Farron? He was shocked to find how little he had been able to forgive her. There was something devilish, he thought, in the way she had contrived to shake his self-confidence at the moment of all others when he had needed it. He could never forget a certain contemptuous curve in her fine, clear profile or the smooth delight of her tone at some of her own cruelties. Some day he would have it out with her when the right moment came. Before he reached the house he had had time to sketch a number of scenes in which she, caught extraordinarily red-handed, was forced to listen to his exposition of the evil of such methods as hers. He would say to her, "I remember that you once said to me, Mrs. Farron—" Anger cut short his vision as a cloud of her phrases came back to him, like stinging bees.

He had hoped for a minute alone with Mathilde, but as Pringle opened the drawing-room door for him he heard the sound of laughter, and seeing that even Mrs. Farron herself was down, he exclaimed quickly:

"What, am I late?"

Every one laughed all the more at this.

"That's just what Mr. Farron said you would say at finding that Mama was dressed in time," exclaimed Mathilde, casting an admiring glance at her stepfather.

"You'd suppose I'd never been in time for dinner before," remarked Adelaide, giving Wayne her long hand.

"But isn't it wonderful, Pete," put in Mathilde, "how Mr. Farron is always right?"

"Oh, I hope he isn't," said Adelaide; "for what do you think he has just been telling me—that you'd always hate me, Pete, as long as you lived. You see," she went on, the little knot coming in her eyebrows, "I've been telling him all the things I said to you yesterday. They did sound rather awful, and I think I've forgotten some of the worst."

"I haven't," said Pete.

"I remember I told you you were no one."

"You said I was a perfectly nice young man."

"And that you had no business judgment."

"And that I was mixing Mathilde up with a fraud."

"And that I couldn't see any particular reason why she cared about you."

"That you only asked that your son-in-law should be a person."

"I am afraid I said something about not coming to a house where you weren't welcome."

"I know you said something about a bribe."

At this Adelaide laughed out loud.

"I believe I did," she said. "What things one does say sometimes! There's dinner." She rose, and tucked her hand under his arm. "Will you take me in to dinner, Pete, or do you think I'm too despicable to be fed?"

The truth was that they were all four in such high spirits that they could no more help playing together than four colts could help playing in a grass field. Besides, Vincent had taunted Adelaide with her inability ever to make it up with Wayne. She left no trick unturned.

"I don't know," she went on as they sat down at table, "that a marriage is quite legal unless you hate your mother-in-law. I ought to give you some opportunity to go home and say to Mrs. Wayne, 'But I'm afraid I shall never be able to get on with Mrs. Farron.'"

"Oh, he's said that already," remarked Vincent.

"Many a time," said Pete.

Mathilde glanced a little fearfully at her mother. The talk seemed to her amusing, but dangerous.

"Well, then, shall we have a feud, Pete?" said Adelaide in a glass-of-wine-with-you-sir tone. "A good feud in a family can be made very amusing."

"It would be all right for us, of course," said Pete, "but it would be rather hard on Mathilde."

"Mathilde is a better fighter than either of you," put in Vincent. "Adelaide has no continuity of purpose, and you, Pete, are wretchedly kind-hearted; but Mathilde would go into it to the death."

"Oh, I don't know what you mean, Mr. Farron," exclaimed Mathilde, tremendously flattered, and hoping he would go on. "I don't like to fight."

"Neither did Stonewall Jackson, I believe, until they fixed bayonets."

Mathilde, dropping her eyes, saw Pete's hand lying on the table. It was stubby, and she loved it the better for being so; it was firm and boyish and exactly like Pete. Looking up, she caught her mother's eye, and they both remembered. For an instant indecision flickered in Adelaide's look, but she lacked the complete courage to add that to the list—to tell any human being that she had said his hands were stubby; and so her eyes fell before her daughter's.

As dinner went on the adjustment between the four became more nearly perfect; the gaiety, directed by Adelaide, lost all sting. But even as she talked to Pete she was only dimly aware of his existence. Her audience was her husband. She was playing for his praise and admiration, and before soup was over she knew she had it; she knew better than words could tell her that he thought her the most desirable woman in the world. Fortified by that knowledge, the pacification of a cross boy seemed to Adelaide an inconsiderable task.

By the time they rose from table it was accomplished. As they went into the drawing-room Adelaide was thinking that young men were really rather geese, but, then, one wouldn't have them different if one could.

Vincent was thinking how completely attaching a nature like hers would always be to him, since when she yielded her will to his she did it with such complete generosity.

Mathilde was saying to herself:

"Of course I knew Pete's charm would win Mama at last, but even I did not suppose he could do it the very first evening."

And Pete was thinking:

"A former beauty thinks she can put anything over, and in a way she can. I feel rather friendly toward her."

The Farrons had decided while they were dressing that after dinner they would retire to Vincent's study and give the lovers a few minutes to themselves.

Left alone, Pete and Mathilde stood looking seriously at each other, and then at the room which only a few weeks before had witnessed their first prolonged talk.

"I never saw your mother look a quarter as beautiful as she does this evening," said Wayne.

"Isn't she marvelous, the way she can make up for everything when she wants?" Mathilde answered with enthusiasm.

Pete shook his head.

"She can never make up for one thing."

"O Pete!"

"She can never give me back my first instinctive, egotistical, divine conviction that there was every reason why you should love me. I shall always hear her voice saying, 'But why should Mathilde love you?' And I shall never know a good answer."

"What," cried Mathilde, "don't you know the answer to that! I do. Mama doesn't, of course. Mama loves people for reasons outside themselves: she loves me because I'm her child, and Grandpapa because he's her father, and Mr. Farron because she thinks he's strong. If she didn't think him strong, I'm not sure she'd love him. But I love you for being just as you are, because you are my choice. Whatever you do or say, that can't be changed—"

The door opened, and Pringle entered with a tray in his hand, and his eyes began darting about in search of empty coffee-cups. Mathilde and Pete were aware of a common feeling of guilt, not that they were concealing the cups, though there was something of that accusation in Pringle's expression, but because the pause between them was so obvious. So Mathilde said suddenly:

"Pringle, Mr. Wayne and I are engaged to be married."

"Indeed, Miss?" said Pringle, with a smile; and so seldom was this phenomenon seen to take place that Wayne noted for the first time that Pringle's teeth were false. "I'm delighted to hear it; and you, too, sir. This is a bad world to go through alone."

"Do you approve of marriage, Pringle?" said Wayne.

The cups, revealing themselves one by one, were secured as Pringle answered:

"In my class of life, sir, we don't give much time to considering what we approve of and disapprove of. But young people are all alike when they're first engaged, always wondering how it is going to turn out, and hoping the other party won't know that they're wondering. But when you get old, and you look back on all the mistakes and the disadvantages and the sacrifices, you'll find that you won't be able to imagine that you could have gone through it with any other person—in spite of her faults," he added almost to himself.

When he was gone, Pete and Mathilde turned and kissed each other.

"When we get old—" they murmured.

They really believed that it could never happen to them.

THE END