t Adelaide to go into
details as to his visit; he did not think that the expedition to the pier
could be given the judicial, grandfatherly tone that he wanted to give.
So he did not communicate at all with his daughter that night.

The next morning about nine, however, when she was sitting up in bed,
with her tray on her knees, and on her feet a white satin coverlet sown
as thickly with bright little flowers as the Milky Way with stars, her
last words to Vincent, who was standing by the fire, with his newspaper
folded in his hands, ready to go down-town, were interrupted, as they
nearly always were, by the burr of the telephone.

She took it up from the table by her bed, and as she did so she fixed her
eyes on her husband and looked steadily at him all the time that central
was making the connection; she was trying to answer that unsolved problem
as to whether or not a mist hung between them. Then she got her
connection.

"Yes, Papa; it is Adelaide." "Yes?" "Did she appear like a lady?" "A
lady?" "You don't know what I mean by that? Why, Papa!" "Well, did she
appear respectable?" "How cross you are to me!" "I'm glad to hear it. You
did not sound cheerful."

She hung up the receiver and turned to Vincent, making eyes of surprise.

"Really, papa is too strange. Why should he be cross to me because he has
had an unsatisfactory interview with the Wayne boy's mother? I never
wanted him to go, anyhow, Vin. I wanted to send _you_."

"It would probably be better for you to go yourself."

He left the room as if he had said nothing remarkable. But it was
remarkable, in Adelaide's experience, that he should avoid any
responsibility, and even more so that he should shift it to her
shoulders. For an instant she faced the possibility, the most terrible of
any that had occurred to her, that the balance was changing between them;
that she, so willing to be led, was to be forced to guide. She had seen
it happen so often between married couples--the weight of character begin
on one side of the scale, and then slowly the beam would shift. Once it
had happened to her. Was it to happen again? No, she told herself; never
with Farron. He would command or die, lead her or leave her.

Mathilde knocked at her door, as she did every morning as soon as her
stepfather had gone down town. She had had an earlier account of Mr.
Lanley's interview. It had read:

"DEAREST GIRL:

"The great discussion did not go very well, apparently. The opin