“I don’t like the woman,” Haskett was repeating with mild persistency.  “She ain’t straight, Mr. Waythorn—­she’ll teach the child to be underhand.  I’ve noticed a change in Lily—­she’s too anxious to please—­and she don’t always tell the truth.  She used to be the straightest child, Mr. Waythorn—­” He broke off, his voice a little thick.  “Not but what I want her to have a stylish education,” he ended.

Waythorn was touched.  “I’m sorry, Mr. Haskett; but frankly, I don’t quite see what I can do.”

Haskett hesitated.  Then he laid his hat on the table, and advanced to the hearth-rug, on which Waythorn was standing.  There was nothing aggressive in his manner; but he had the solemnity of a timid man resolved on a decisive measure.

“There’s just one thing you can do, Mr. Waythorn,” he said.  “You can remind Mrs. Waythorn that, by the decree of the courts, I am entitled to have a voice in Lily’s bringing up.”  He paused, and went on more deprecatingly:  “I’m not the kind to talk about enforcing my rights, Mr. Waythorn.  I don’t know as I think a man is entitled to rights he hasn’t known how to hold on to; but this business of the child is different.  I’ve never let go there—­and I never mean to.”

The scene left Waythorn deeply shaken.  Shamefacedly, in indirect ways, he had been finding out about Haskett; and all that he had learned was favorable.  The little man, in order to be near his daughter, had sold out his share in a profitable business in Utica, and accepted a modest clerkship in a New York manufacturing house.  He boarded in a shabby street and had few acquaintances.  His passion for Lily filled his life.  Waythorn felt that this exploration of Haskett was like groping about with a dark-lantern in his wife’s past; but he saw now that there were recesses his lantern had not explored.  He had never inquired into the exact circumstances of his wife’s first matrimonial rupture.  On the surface all had been fair.  It was she who had obtained the divorce, and the court had given her the child.  But Waythorn knew how many ambiguities such a verdict might cover.  The mere fact that Haskett retained a right over his daughter implied an unsuspected compromise.  Waythorn was an idealist.  He always refused to recognize unpleasant contingencies till he found himself confronted with them, and then he saw them followed by a special train of consequences.  His next days were thus haunted, and he determined to try to lay the ghosts by conjuring them up in his wife’s presence.

When he repeated Haskett’s request a flame of anger passed over her face; but she subdued it instantly and spoke with a slight quiver of outraged motherhood.

“It is very ungentlemanly of him,” she said.

The word grated on Waythorn.  “That is neither here nor there.  It’s a bare question of rights.”

She murmured:  “It’s not as if he could ever be a help to Lily—­”

Waythorn flushed.  This was even less to his taste.  “The question is,” he repeated, “what authority has he over her?”