"I do love you, mother," said Lita; "I love you dearly—better than I love Pat, only I can't help seeing that he behaves better. Or perhaps not. Women understand the art of undermining better than men do. I think Pat did all he knew how. You both filled my mind with poison against the other, drop by drop. Oh, you don't know how dreadful it is to be poisoned all the time by the two people you love best in the world!"
Mrs. Hazlitt looked up into the face of her former husband, as to an oracle.
"Do you think it's our divorce she's talking about?"
"Of course it isn't, mother," Lita answered. "I see you had a perfect right not to be husband and wife any more if you didn't want to be; but you couldn't change the fact that you are still my parents. You ought to be able to coöperate about me, to present a united front."
"You'll find we present a united front on this issue," said Hazlitt sternly. "I mean your engagement."
"Indeed?" said his daughter. "Let me tell you, I could separate you tomorrow on it. I'm an expert. I should only have to intimate to Pat that mother was getting to like Luke so much that behind his back—but I'm sick of being treacherous and untruthful. You two must face the fact that I love you both; that I like to be with both of you; and that I will not be made to feel lower than the wombat because I do love you both. Now, there it is; settle it between you."
After she had gone they continued to stare at each other, like the last sane people in a world gone mad.
"What," said her father, "do you gather that that incomprehensible tirade was all about?"
"I can't make out," answered her mother. "She never was like that before—so excitable and rude. And I need not tell you that it's all her fancy. I've been ridiculously scrupulous in never saying anything to her but what a girl ought to hear about her father—a fixed principle that our difficulties should not come between you and her."
"Of course, I know," he answered. "I know, because I know how absolutely without foundation her attack on me was. I've been most punctilious. To hurt a child's ideal of her mother! No, I have a good deal to reproach myself with in regard to my treatment of you, Alita; but not that—not that."