Storri came that evening to see Mrs. Hanway-Harley. Both parties were acting, Storri affecting melancholy while he was on fire with passionate rage, and Mrs. Hanway-Harley assuming the rôle of the mother who, although she regrets, is still tenderly unwilling to control those wrongly headstrong courses upon which her child is bent. There was a world of polite fencing between Mrs. Hanway-Harley and Storri, in which each bore testimony to the esteem in which the other was held. It was decided that Storri should continue those dinners with the Harleys; Dorothy might discover a final wisdom.
Storri told Mrs. Hanway-Harley that he feared Dorothy had given her heart to Richard. This admission was gall and wormwood to the self-love of Storri. He made it, however, and recalled Mrs. Hanway-Harley to Dorothy's chatter concerning the morning talks between Richard and Senator Hanway.
"That odious printer," said Storri, who called all newspaper people printers, "comes each day to get his budget of news from your illustrious brother, madam; and, believe me, your daughter makes some sly pretext for being with them—with him, the odious printer! Bah! I wish we were in Russia; I would blow out the rogue's life like a candle! Why, my Czar would laugh were so mean a being to succeed in obstructing the love of his Storri!"
Mrs. Hanway-Harley was struck by the suggestion that Richard was Dorothy's lover in the dark. She remembered Dorothy's teasing praises of Richard, and her talk of how sapiently he discoursed with "Uncle Pat." The praises occurred on that evening when, from her wisdom, she, Mrs. Hanway-Harley, had warned her innocent child against the error of entertaining one gentleman with the merits of another. Mrs. Hanway-Harley even brought to mind the replies made by her innocent child to those warnings; and her own wrath began to stir as the suspicion grew that her innocent child had been secretly laughing at her. Like all shallow folk, Mrs. Hanway-Harley prided herself upon being as deep as the sea, and it did her self-esteem no good to think that she had been sounded, not to say charted, by her own daughter, who had gone steering in and out, keeping always the channel of her credulity, and never once running aground. Little lamps of anger lighted their evil wicks in Mrs. Hanway-Harley's eyes as she thus reflected.
And that morning armful of roses? No, Storri was not the moving cause of their fragrant appearance upon the Harley premises. Storri regretted that he had not once bethought him of this delicate attention. Mrs. Hanway-Harley wrung her hands. It was Dorothy who first planted in her the belief that the flowers were from Storri. Oh, the artful jade! That was the cause of her timorous objections when Mrs. Hanway-Harley, with the fond yet honorable curiosity of a mother, spoke of mentioning those flowers to Storri. The perjured Dorothy was aware of their felon origin; doubtless, she even then encouraged the miserable Richard in his love.
As these lights burst one after the other upon Mrs. Hanway-Harley, she could have punished her own dullness by beating her head against the wall. However, she restrained herself, and closed by inviting Storri to dinner on the next day but one. Storri, still keeping up his tender melancholy, thanked Mrs. Hanway-Harley, accepted, and with many bows, and many sighs to impress upon Mrs. Hanway-Harley his stricken heart, backed himself out into the night.
When Storri was gone, Mrs. Hanway-Harley resolved on an instant talk with Dorothy—no more the innocent, but the artful one. She would make a last attempt to wring from her the name of that lover of the shadows. Should it be Richard—and she was sure of it—that aspiring journalist must never again cross the Harley threshold.
Mrs. Hanway-Harley, who had the merit of expedition, repaired at once to Dorothy's room. That obdurate beauty was half undressed, and her maid had just finished arranging her hair in two raven braids—thick as a ship's cable, they were. As Mrs. Hanway-Harley entered, Dorothy glanced up with half-wistful eye. Poor child! she was hoping her mother might have softened from that granite attitude of the morning! But no, there was nothing tender in the selfish, austere gaze; at that, the spirit of the old astronomical ancestor who, with his water-pans and gate-posts, knew the earth was flat, began to chafe within Dorothy's girlish bosom.
Mrs. Hanway-Harley came to a dignified halt in the middle of the room.
"Cora, you may go," said Mrs. Hanway-Harley.