“What did that boy want?”

Adelaide made a little face.

“Nothing of any importance,” she said.

Things had indeed changed between them if he would accept such an answer as that.  She thought his indifference like the studied oblivion of the debtor who says, “Don’t I owe you something?” and is content with the most non-committal reply.  He lay back and smiled at her.  His expression was not easy to read.

She went down-stairs, where conversation had not prospered.  Mr. Lanley was smoking, with his cigar drooping from a corner of his mouth.  He felt very unhappy.  Mathilde was frightened.  Wayne had recast his opening sentence a dozen times.  He kept saying to himself that he wanted it to be perfectly simple, but not infantile, and each phrase he thought of in conformity with his one rule sounded like the opening lines of the stage child’s speech.

In the crisis of Adelaide’s being actually back again in the room he found himself saying: 

“Mrs. Farron, I think you ought to know exactly what has been happening.”

“Don’t I?” she asked.

“No.  You know that I was going to San Francisco the day after to-morrow—­”

“Oh dear,” said Adelaide, regretfully, “is it given up?”

He told her rather slowly the whole story.  The most terrible moment was, as he had expected, when he explained that they had met, he and Mathilde, to apply for their marriage license.  Adelaide turned, and looked full at her daughter.

“You were going to treat me like that?” Mathilde burst into tears.  She had long been on the brink of them, and now they came more from nerves than from a sense of the justice of her mother’s complaint.  But the sound of them upset Wayne hopelessly.  He couldn’t go on for a minute, and Mr. Lanley rose to his feet.

“Good Lord! good Lord!” he said, “that was dishonorable!  Can’t you see that that is dishonorable, to marry her on the sly when we trusted her to go about with you—­”

“O Papa, never mind about the dishonorableness,” said Adelaide.  “The point is”—­and she looked at Wayne—­“that they were building their elopement on something that turned out to be a fraud.  That doesn’t make one think very highly of your judgment, Mr. Wayne.”

“I made a mistake, Mrs. Farron.”

“It was a bad moment to make one.  You have worked three years with this firm and never suspected anything wrong?”

“Yes, sometimes I have—­”

Adelaide’s eyebrows went up.

“Oh, you have suspected.  You had reason to think the whole thing might be dishonest, but you were willing to run away with Mathilde and let her get inextricably committed before you found out—­”

“That’s irresponsible, sir,” said Lanley.  “I don’t suppose you understood what you were doing, but it was utterly irresponsible.”

“I think,” said Adelaide, “that it finally answers the question as to whether or not you are too young to be married.”