Everybody separately cried out to her to stay as she began to retreat to the door, and no one more firmly than Adelaide, who thought it as careless as Mr. Lanley thought it creditable that a mother would be willing to go away and leave the discussion of her son’s life to others.  Adelaide saw an opportunity of killing two birds.

“You are just the person for whom I have been longing, Mrs. Wayne,” she said.  “Now you have come, we can settle the whole question.”

“And just what is the question?” asked Mrs. Wayne.  She sat down, looking distressed and rather guilty.  She knew they were going to ask her what she knew about all the things that had been going on, and a hasty examination of her consciousness showed her that she knew everything, though she had avoided Pete’s full confidence.  She knew simply by knowing that any two young people who loved each other would rather marry than separate for a year.  But she was aware that this deduction, so inevitable to her, was exactly the one which would be denied by the others.  So she sat, with a nervously pleasant smile on her usually untroubled face, and waited for Adelaide to speak.  She did not have long to wait.

“You did not know, I am sure, Mrs. Wayne, that your son intended to run away with my daughter?”

All four of them stared at her, making her feel more and more guilty; and at last Lanley, unable to bear it, asked: 

“Did you know that, Mrs. Wayne?”

“Oh, dear!” said Mrs. Wayne.  “Yes.  I knew it was possible; so did you.  Pete didn’t tell me about it, though.”

“But I did tell Mrs. Farron,” said Pete.

Adelaide protested at once.

“You told me?” Then she remembered that a cloud had obscured the end of their last interview, but she did not withdraw her protest.

“You know, Mrs. Farron, you have a bad habit of not listening to what is said to you,” Wayne answered firmly.

This sort of impersonal criticism was to Adelaide the greatest impertinence, and she showed her annoyance.

“In spite of the disabilities of age, Mr. Wayne,” she said, “I find I usually can get a simple idea if clearly presented.”

“Why, how absurd that is, Wayne!” put in Mr. Lanley.  “You don’t mean to say that you told Mrs. Farron you were going to elope with her daughter, and she didn’t take in what you said?”

“And yet that is just what took place.”

Adelaide glanced at her father, as much as to say, “You see what kind of young man it is,” and then went on: 

“One fact at least I have learned only this minute—­that is that the finances for this romantic trip were to be furnished by a dishonorable firm from which your son has been dismissed; or, no, resigned, isn’t it?”

The human interest attached to losing a job brought mother and son together on the instant.

“O Pete, you’ve left the firm!”

He nodded.

“O my poor boy!”