ore long his mother came in. She was looking very fine. She had on a
new gray dress that she had had made for her by a fallen woman from an
asylum, but which had turned out better than such ventures of Mrs.
Wayne's usually did.

She had supposed she and Mr. Lanley were to dine alone, an idea which
had not struck her as revolutionary. Accustomed to strange meals in
strange company--a bowl of milk with a prison chaplain at a dairy
lunch-room, or even, on one occasion, a supper in an Owl Lunch Wagon with
a wavering drunkard,--she had thought that a quiet, perfect dinner with
Mr. Lanley sounded pleasant enough. But she was not sorry to find it had
been enlarged. She liked to meet new people. She was extremely
optimistic, and always hoped that they would prove either spiritually
rewarding, or practically useful to some of her projects. When she saw
Mrs. Baxter, with her jetty hair, jeweled collar, and eyes a trifle too
saurian for perfect beauty, she at once saw a subscription to the
working-girl's club. The fourth person Mr. Wilsey, Lanley's lawyer, she
knew well by reputation. She wondered if she could make him see that his
position on the eight-hour law was absolutely anti-social.

Mr. Lanley enjoyed a small triumph when she entered. He had been so
discreet in his description of her to Mrs. Baxter, he had been so careful
not to hint that she was an illuminating personality who had suddenly
come into his life, that he knew he had left his old friend with the
general impression that Mrs. Wayne was merely the mother of an
undesirable suitor of Mathilde's who spent most of her life in the
company of drunkards. So when she came in, a little late as usual, in her
long, soft, gray dress, with a pink rose at her girdle, looking far more
feminine than Mrs. Baxter, about whom Adelaide's offensive adjective
"upholstered" still clung, he felt the full effect of her appearance. He
even enjoyed the obviously suspicious glance which Mrs. Baxter
immediately afterward turned upon him.

At dinner things began well. They talked about people and events of which
Mrs. Wayne knew nothing, but her interest and good temper made her not an
outsider, but an audience. Anecdotes which even Mr. Lanley might have
felt were trivial gossip became, through her attention to them, incidents
of the highest human interest. Such an uncritical interest was perhaps
too stimulating.

He expected nothing dangerous when, during the game course, Mrs. Baxter
turn