“How do you know?  It wouldn’t break the glass.”

“No; but I hate the noise.  I don’t know; I just made it up because it’s so likely.”

“She always speaks so affectionately of you.”

“She’s a coward; that’s the only difference.  She hates me just as much.”

“Well, you’ve never been nice to her, Adelaide.”

“I should think not.”

“She’s not as bad as you think,” said Mr. Lanley, who believed in old-fashioned loyalty.

“I can’t bear her,” said Adelaide.

“Why not?” As far as his feelings went, this seemed a perfectly safe question; but it wasn’t.

“Because she tries so hard to make you ridiculous.  Oh, not intentionally; but she talks of you as if you were a Don Juan of twenty-five.  You ought to be flattered, Papa dear, at having jealous scenes made about you when you are—­what is it?—­sixty-five.”

“Four,” said Mr. Lanley.

“Yes; such a morning as I had!  Not a minute with poor Vincent because you had had Mrs. Wayne to dine.  I’m not complaining, but I don’t like my father represented as a sort of comic-paper old man, you poor dear,”—­and she laid her long, gloved hand on his knee,—­“who have always been so conspicuously dignified.”

“If I have,” said her father, “I don’t know that anything she says can change it.”

“No, of course; only it was horrible to me to hear her describing you in the grip of a boyish passion.  But don’t let’s talk of it.  I hear,” she said, as if she were changing the subject, “that you have taken to going to the Metropolitan Museum at odd moments.”

He felt utterly stripped, and said without hope: 

“Yes; I’m a trustee, you know.”

Adelaide just glanced at him.

“You always have been, I think.”  They drove home in silence.

One reason why she was determined to have her father come home was that it was the first time that Vincent was to take luncheon downstairs, and when Adelaide had a part to play she liked to have an audience.  She was even glad to find Wayne in the drawing-room, though she did wonder to herself if the little creature had entirely given up earning his living.  It was a very different occasion from Pete’s last luncheon there; every one was as pleasant as possible.  As soon as the meal was over, Adelaide put her hand on her husband’s shoulder.

“You’re going to lie down at once, Vin.”

He rose obediently, but Wayne interposed.  It seemed to him that it would be possible to tell his story to Farron.

“Oh, can’t Mr. Farron stay a few minutes?” he said.  “I want so much to speak to you and him together about—­”

Adelaide cut him short.

“No, he can’t.  It’s more important that he should get strong than anything else is.  You can talk to me all you like when I come down.  Come, Vin.”

When they were up-stairs, and she was tucking him up on his sofa, he asked gently: