“Mrs. Farron, I think you ought to know exactly what has been happening.”
“Don’t I?” she asked.
“No. You know that I was going to San Francisco the day after to-morrow—”
“Oh dear,” said Adelaide, regretfully, “is it given up?”
He told her rather slowly the whole story. The most terrible moment was, as he had expected, when he explained that they had met, he and Mathilde, to apply for their marriage license. Adelaide turned, and looked full at her daughter.
“You were going to treat me like that?” Mathilde burst into tears. She had long been on the brink of them, and now they came more from nerves than from a sense of the justice of her mother’s complaint. But the sound of them upset Wayne hopelessly. He couldn’t go on for a minute, and Mr. Lanley rose to his feet.
“Good Lord! good Lord!” he said, “that was dishonorable! Can’t you see that that is dishonorable, to marry her on the sly when we trusted her to go about with you—”
“O Papa, never mind about the dishonorableness,” said Adelaide. “The point is”—and she looked at Wayne—“that they were building their elopement on something that turned out to be a fraud. That doesn’t make one think very highly of your judgment, Mr. Wayne.”
“I made a mistake, Mrs. Farron.”
“It was a bad moment to make one. You have worked three years with this firm and never suspected anything wrong?”