Her silence in the drawing-room was of a more concentrated sort, and when she had taken her coffee and cigarette she said to Mathilde:
“My dear, I promised to go back to Vincent at this time. Will you go instead? I want to have a word with Mr. Wayne.”
Adelaide had never entered any contest in her life, whether it was a dispute with a dressmaker or a quarrel with her husband, without remembering the comfortable fact that she was a beauty. With men she did not neglect the advantage that being a woman gave her, and with the particular man now before her she had, she knew, a third line of defense; she was the mother of his love, and she thought she detected in him a special weakness for mothers. But it would have been better if he had respected women and mothers less, for he thought so highly of them that he believed they ought to play fair.
Sitting in a very low chair, she looked up at him.
“Mathilde has been telling me something about a plan of yours to take her to China with you. We could not consent to that, you know.”
“I’m sorry,” said Pete. The tone was pleasant. That was the trouble; it was too pleasant a tone for a man relinquishing a cherished hope. It sounded almost as if he regretted the inevitable disappointment of the family.
Adelaide tried a new attack.
“Your mother—have you consulted her?”
“Yes, I’ve told her our plans.”
“And she approves?”