n saying:

"Oh, don't you like this? I was just thinking I had never seen Mathilde
looking so well, in her rather more mature and subtle vein."

It was just as she wished to appear, but she glanced at her stepfather,
disturbed by her constant suspicion that he read her heart more clearly
than any one else, more clearly than she liked.

"How shockingly late they are!" said Adelaide, suddenly appearing in
the utmost splendor. She moved about, kissing her father and arranging
the chairs. "Do you know, Vin, why it is that Pringle likes to make the
room look as if it were arranged for a funeral? Why do you suppose they
don't come?"

"Any one who arrives after Adelaide is apt to be in wrong," observed
her husband.

"Well, I think it's awfully incompetent always to be waiting for other
people," she returned, just laying her hand an instant on his shoulder to
indicate that he alone was privileged to make fun of her.

"That perhaps is what the Waynes think," he answered.

Mathilde's heart sank a little at this. She knew her mother did not like
to be kept waiting for dinner.

"When I was a young man--" began Mr. Lanley.

"It was the custom," interrupted Adelaide in exactly the same tone, "for
a hostess to be in her drawing-room at least five minutes before the hour
set for the arrival of the guests."

"Adelaide," her father pleaded, "I don't talk like that; at least
not often."

"You would, though, if you didn't have me to correct you," she retorted.
"There's the bell at last; but it always takes people like that forever
to get their wraps off."

"It's only ten minutes past eight," said Farron, and Mathilde blessed
him with a look.

Mrs. Wayne came quickly into the room, so fast that her dress floated
behind her; she was in black and very grand. No one would have supposed
that she had murmured to Pete just before the drawing-room door was
opened, "I hope they haven't run in any old relations on us."

"I'm afraid I'm late," she began.

"She always is," Pete murmured to Mathilde as he took her hand and quite
openly squeezed it, and then, before Adelaide had time for the rather
casual introduction she had planned, he himself put the hand he was
holding into his mother's. "This is my girl, Mother," he said. They
smiled at each other. Mathilde tried to say something. Mrs. Wayne stooped
and kissed her. Mr. Lanley was obviously affected. Adelaide wasn't going
to have any scene like that.

"Late?" she said, as if not