she answered in response to his
question. "He ought to be. He is in charge of two lovely young creatures
hardly Mathilde's age who have already taken complete control of the
household."

"You've seen him, of course."

"For a few minutes; they allow me a few minutes. They communicate by
secret signals when they think I have stayed long enough."

Mr. Lanley never knew how to treat this mood of his daughter's, which
seemed to him as unreasonable as if it were emotional, and yet as cold as
if it were logic itself. He changed the subject and said boldly:

"Mrs. Baxter is coming to-morrow."

Adelaide's eyes faintly flashed.

"Oh, wouldn't you know it!" she murmured. "Just at the most inconvenient
time--inconvenient for me, I mean. Really, lovers are the only people you
can depend on. I wish I had a lover."

"Adelaide," said her father with some sternness, "even in fun you should
not say such a thing. If Mathilde heard you--"

"Mathilde is the person who made me see it. Her boy is here all the
time, trying to think of something to please her. And who have I?
Vincent has his nurses; and you have your old upholstered lady. I can't
help wishing I had a lover. They are the only people who, as the Wayne
boy would say, 'stick around.' But don't worry, Papa, I have a loyal
nature." She was interrupted by a knock at the door, and a nurse--the
same who had been too encouraging to please her at the hospital--put in
her head and said brightly:

"You may see Mr. Farron now, Mrs. Farron."

Adelaide turned to her father and made a little bow.

"See how I am favored," she said, and left him.

Nothing of this mood was apparent when she entered her husband's room,
though she noticed that the arrangement of the furniture had been
changed, and, what she disliked even more, that they had brushed his hair
in a new way. This, with his pallor and thinness, made him look strange
to her. She bent over, and laid her cheek to his almost motionless lips.

"Well, dear," she said, "have you seen the church-warden part they have
given your hair?"

He shook his head impatiently, and she saw, she had made the mistake of
trying to give the tone to an interview in which she was not the leading
character.

"Who has the room above mine, Adelaide?" he asked.

"My maid."

"Ask her not to practice the fox-trot, will you?"

"O Vincent, she is never there."

"My mistake," he answered, and shut his eyes.

She repented at once.

"Of course I