Adelaide could not resist a note of enjoyment entering into her tone as she replied:
"Insolent in the extreme."
She was leaning against the wall at the foot of his bed, and though she was not looking at him, she felt his eyes on her.
"Adelaide," he said, "you should not have brought me that message."
"You mean it is bad for your health to be worried, dearest?" she asked in a tone so soft that only an expert in tones could have detected something not at all soft beneath it. She glanced at her husband under her lashes. Wasn"t he any more an expert in her tones?
"I mean," he answered, "that you should have told him to go to the devil."
"Oh, I leave that to you, Vin." She laughed, and added after a second"s pause, "I was only a messenger."
"Tell him I shall be down-town next week."
"Oh, Vin, no; not next week."
"Tell him next week."
"I can"t do that."
"I thought you were only a messenger."
"Your doctor would not hear of it. It would be madness."
Farron leaned over and touched his bell. The nurse was instantly in the room, looking at Vincent, Adelaide thought, as a water-dog looks at its master when it perceives that a stick is about to be thrown into the pond.
"Miss Gregory," said Vincent, "there"s a young man from my office down-stairs. Will you tell him that I can"t see him to-day, but that I shall be down-town next week, and I"ll see him then?"
Miss Gregory was almost at the door before Adelaide stopped her.
"You must know that Mr. Farron cannot get down-town next week."
"Has the doctor said not?"
Adelaide shook her head impatiently.
"I don"t suppose any one has been so insane as to ask him," she answered.
Miss Gregory smiled temperately.
"Oh, next week is a long time off," she said, and left the room. Adelaide turned to her husband.
"Do you enjoy being humored?" she asked.
Farron had closed his eyes, and now opened them.
"I beg your pardon," he said. "I didn"t hear."
"She knows quite well that you can"t go down-town next week. She takes your message just to humor you."
"She"s an excellent nurse," said Farron.
"For babies," Adelaide felt like answering, but she didn"t. She said instead, "Anyhow, Burke will never accept that as an answer." She was surprised to hear something almost boastful in her own tone.
"Oh, I think he will."
She waited breathlessly for some sound from down-stairs or even for the flurried reentrance of Miss Gregory. There was a short silence, and then came the sound of the shutting of the front door. Marty had actually gone.
Vincent did not even open his eyes when Miss Gregory returned; he did not exert himself to ask how his message had been received. Adelaide waited an instant, and then went back to Mrs. Baxter with a strange sense of having sustained a small personal defeat.
Mrs. Baxter was so thoroughly ruffled that she was prepared to attack even the sacrosanct Adelaide. But she was not given the chance.
"Well, how did Marty treat you?" said Adelaide.
Mrs. Baxter sniffed.
"We had not very much in common," she returned.
"No; Marty"s a very real person." There was a pause. "What became of him?
Did he go?"
"Yes, your husband"s trained nurse gave him a message, and he went away."
"Quietly?" The note of disappointment was so plain that Mrs. Baxter asked in answer:
"What would you have wanted him to do?"
Adelaide laughed.
"I suppose it would have been too much to expect that he would drag you and Miss Gregory about by your hair," she said, "but I own I should have liked some little demonstration. But perhaps," she added more brightly, "he has gone back to wreck the docks."
At this moment Mathilde entered the room in her hat and furs, and distracted the conversation from Burke. Adelaide, who was fond of enunciating the belief that you could tell when people were in love by the frequency with which they wore their best clothes, noticed now how wonderfully lovely Mathilde was looking; but she noticed it quite unsuspiciously, for she was thinking, "My child is really a beauty."
"You remember Mrs. Baxter, my dear."
Mathilde did not remember her in the least, though she smiled sufficiently. To her Mrs. Baxter seemed just one of many dressy old ladies who drifted across the horizon only too often. If any one had told her that her grandfather had ever been supposed to be in danger of succ.u.mbing to charms such as these, she would have thought the notion an ugly example of grown-up pessimism.
Mrs. Baxter held her hand and patted it.
"Where does she get that lovely golden hair?" she asked. "Not from you, does she?"
"She gets it from her father," answered Adelaide, and her expression added, "you dreadful old goose."
In the pause Mathilde made her escape unquestioned. She knew even before a last pathetic glance that her mother was unutterably wearied with her visitor. In other circ.u.mstances she would have stayed to effect a rescue, but at present she was engaged in a deed of some recklessness on her own account. She was going to meet Pete Wayne secretly at the Metropolitan Museum.