Adelaide was sitting with her husband when her visitor’s name was brought up.  Since she had discovered that she was to be nothing but a sort of super-nurse to him, she found herself expert at rendering such service.  She had brought in his favorite flowers, chosen a book for his bedside, and now sat gossiping beside him, not bringing him, as she said to herself, any of her real troubles; that would not be good for him.  How extraordinarily easy it was to conceal, she thought.  She heard her own tones, as gay and intimate as ever, as satisfactory to Vincent; and yet all the time her mind was working apart on her anxieties about Mathilde—­anxieties with which, of course, one couldn’t bother a poor sick creature.  She smoothed his pillow with the utmost tenderness.

“Oh, Pringle,” she said, in answer to his announcement that Mrs. Baxter was down-stairs, “you haven’t let her in?”

“She’s in the drawing-room, Madam.”  And Pringle added as a clear indication of what he considered her duty, “She came in Mr. Lanley’s motor.”

“Of course she did.  Well, say I’ll be down,” and as Pringle went away with this encouraging intelligence, Adelaide sank even farther back in her chair and looked at her husband.  “What I am called upon to sacrifice to other people’s love affairs!  The Waynes and Mrs. Baxter—­I never have time for my own friends.  I don’t mind Mrs. Baxter when you’re well, and I can have a dinner; I ask all the stupid people together to whom I owe parties, and she is so pleased with them, and thinks they represent the most brilliant New York circle; but to have to go down and actually talk to her, isn’t that hard, Vin?”

“Hard on me,” said Farron.

“Oh, I shall come back—­exhausted.”

“By what you have given out?”

“No, but by her intense intimacy.  You have no idea how well she knows me.  It’s Adelaide this and Adelaide that and ’the last time you stayed with me in Baltimore.’  You know, Vin, I never stayed with her but once, and that only because she found me in the hotel and kidnapped me.  However,”—­Adelaide stood up with determination,—­“one good thing is, I have begun to have an effect on my father.  He does not like her any more.  He was distinctly bored at the prospect of her visit this time.  He did not resent it at all when I called her an upholstered old lady.  I really think,” she added, with modest justice, “that I am rather good at poisoning people’s minds against their undesirable friends.”  She paused, debating how long it would take her to separate Mathilde from the Wayne boy; and recalling that this was no topic for an invalid, she smiled at him and went down-stairs.

“My dear Adelaide!” said Mrs. Baxter, enveloping her in a powdery caress.

“How wonderfully you’re looking, Mrs. Baxter,” said Adelaide, choosing her adverb with intention.

“Now tell me, dear,” said Mrs. Baxter, with a wave of a gloved hand, “what are those Italian embroideries?”