“I’m sorry,” said Pete.  The tone was pleasant.  That was the trouble; it was too pleasant a tone for a man relinquishing a cherished hope.  It sounded almost as if he regretted the inevitable disappointment of the family.

Adelaide tried a new attack.

“Your mother—­have you consulted her?”

“Yes, I’ve told her our plans.”

“And she approves?”

Wayne might choose to betray his mother in the full irresponsibility of her attitude to so sympathetic a listener as Mr. Lanley, but he had no intention of giving Mrs. Farron such a weapon.  At the same time he did not intend to be untruthful.  His answer was this: 

“My mother,” he said, “is not like most women of her age.  She believes in love.”

“In all love, quite indiscriminately?”

He hesitated an instant.

“I put it wrong,” he answered.  “I meant that she believes in the importance of real love.”

“And has she a spell by which she tells real love?”

“She believes mine to be real.”

“Oh, yours!  Very likely.  Perhaps it’s maternal vanity on my part, Mr. Wayne, but I must own I can imagine a man’s contriving to love my daughter, so gentle, so intelligent, and so extraordinarily lovely to look at.  I was not thinking of your feelings, but of hers.”

“You can see no reason why she should love me?”

Adelaide moved her shoulders about.

“Well, I want it explained, that’s all, from your own point of view.  I see my daughter as an unusual person, ignorant of life, to whom it seems to me all things are possible.  And I see you, a very nice young man.  But what else?  I ask to be told why you fulfil all possibilities.  Don’t misunderstand me.  I am not mercenary.  Mathilde will have plenty of money of her own some day.  I don’t want a millionaire.  I want a person.”

“Of course, if you ask me why Mathilde should love me—­”

“Don’t be untruthful, Mr. Wayne.  I thought better of you.  If you should come back from China next year to find her engaged to some one else, you could tell a great many reasons why he was not good enough for her.  Now tell me some of the reasons why you are.  And please don’t include because you love her so much, for almost any one would do that.”

Pete fought down his panic, reminding himself that no man living could hear such words without terror.  His egotism, never colossal, stood feebly between him and Mrs. Farron’s estimate of him.  He seemed to sink back into the general human species.  If he had felt inclined to detail his own qualities, he could not have thought of one.  There was a long silence, while Adelaide sat with a look of docile teachableness upon her expectant face.

At last Wayne stood up.

“It’s no use, Mrs. Farron,” he said “That question of yours can’t be answered.  I believe she loves me.  It’s my bet against yours.”

“I won’t gamble with my child’s future,” she returned.  “I did with my own.  Sit down again, Mr. Wayne.  You have heard, I suppose, that I have been married twice?”