“Mama, I will marry Pete,” said Mathilde, trying to make a voice broken with sobs sound firm and resolute.

“Mr. Wayne at the moment has no means whatsoever, as I understand it,” said Adelaide.

“I don’t care whether he has or not,” said Mathilde.

Adelaide laughed.  The laugh rather shocked Mr. Lanley.  He tried to explain.

“I feel sorry for you, but you can’t imagine how painful it is to us to think that Mathilde came so near to being mixed up with a crooked deal like that—­Mathilde, of all people.  You ought to see that for yourself.”

“I see it, thank you,” said Pete.

“Really, Mr. Wayne, I don’t think that’s quite the tone to take,” put in Adelaide.

“I don’t think it is,” said Wayne.

Mathilde, making one last grasp at self-control, said: 

“They wouldn’t be so horrid to you, Pete, if they understood—­” But the muscles of her throat contracted, and she never got any further.

“I suppose I shall be thought a very cruel parent,” said Adelaide, almost airily, “but this sort of thing can’t go on, really, you know.”

“No, it really can’t,” said Mr. Lanley.  “We feel you have abused our confidence.”

“No, I don’t reproach Mr. Wayne along those lines,” said Adelaide.  “He owes me nothing.  I had not supposed Mathilde would deceive me, but we won’t discuss that now.  It isn’t anything against Mr. Wayne to say he has made a mistake.  Five years from now, I’m sure, he would not put himself, or let himself be put, in such an extremely humiliating position.  And I don’t say that if he came back five years from now with some financial standing I should be any more opposed to him than to any one else.  Only in the meantime there can be no engagement.”  Adelaide looked very reasonable.  “You must see that.”

“You mean I’m not to see him?”

“Of course not.”

“I must see him,” said Mathilde.

Lanley looked at Wayne.

“This is an opportunity for you to rehabilitate yourself.  You ought to be man enough to promise you won’t see her until you are in a position to ask her to be your wife.”

“I have asked her that already, you know,” returned Wayne with an attempt at a smile.

“Pete, you wouldn’t desert me?” said Mathilde.

“If Mr. Wayne had any pride, my dear, he would not wish to come to a house where he was unwelcome,” said her mother.

“I’m afraid I haven’t any of that sort of pride at all, Mrs. Farron.”

Adelaide made a little gesture, as much as to say, with her traditions, she really did not know how to deal with people who hadn’t.

“Mathilde,”—­Wayne spoke very gently,—­“don’t you think you could stop crying?”

“I’m trying all the time, Pete.  You won’t go away, no matter what they say?”

“Of course not.”

“It seems to be a question between what I think best for my daughter as opposed to what you think best—­for yourself,” observed Adelaide.