His curt rejoinder rather took the caller aback. She looked about the group as if for inspiration. Anice Lanier had risen, and was at the door. Caleb saw her.
“Please don’t go, Miss Lanier!” he called.
“I would much prefer to,” answered Anice, “if you don’t object. This seems to be purely a family affair and——”
“And at least one person with a decently-balanced brain ought to be present. Our affairs are your affairs as far as you’ll allow. Please do me the favor of staying.”
The visitor had, by this diversion, regained grasp on her plan of action.
“Mr. Conover,” she said, stretching out her suède-gloved hands toward the Railroader in a pretty gesture of helpless appeal as to an all-powerful judge, “I am your son’s wife. He loves me. I love him. Does that tell you nothing?”
“Yes,” said Caleb judicially, “it tells me you love each other; if that’s what you mean. For the sake of argument we’ll take that for granted, just for the present. Now get down to facts.”
“I am your son’s wife,” repeated the woman, somewhat less throatily, but still with brave resolve. “He sought me out and wooed me. He told me I should receive a welcome in his home. He made me love him. Didn’t you, Gerald? And I married him. Ah, but we were happy, we two! Then, like a thunderbolt from the blue sky fell your command that we part. He and I. For long—oh, so long—I have tried to be patient, to wait for time to soften your heart. But at last I couldn’t bear it. I couldn’t bear it, so I came here to meet you in person, to cast myself at your feet if need be. To——”
She paused. The cold, inscrutable gaze of the Railroader’s light eyes did not tend to inspire her very creditable recitation. As a matter of fact, Caleb was at the moment paying very little attention to her words. He was noting the hard dryness of her skin and the only half-hidden lines about mouth, brow and eye; and contrasting them with Anice Lanier’s baby-smooth skin and the soft contour of her neck and cheek.
Had the stranger been saying anything of import Caleb would have missed no syllable. But, through long years of experience with the dreary windiness and empty pothouse eloquence of politicians, the Railroader had learned by instinct, and without waiting to catch so much as the first word, whether anything worth hearing was being said, or if the case were, as he was wont to express it, “an attack of rush-of-words-to-the-mouth.” He had already placed his present caller’s oration in the latter category. But her pause brought him back to himself.