“Of course not.”
“It seems to be a question between what I think best for my daughter as opposed to what you think best—for yourself,” observed Adelaide.
“Nobody wants to turn you out of the house, you know,” said Mr. Lanley in a conciliatory tone, “but the engagement is at an end.”
“If you do turn him out, I’ll go with him,” said Mathilde, and she took his hand and held it in a tight, moist clasp.
They looked so young and so distressed as they stood there hand in hand that Lanley found himself relenting.
“We don’t say that your marriage will never be possible,” he said. “We are asking you to wait—consent to a separation of six months.”
“Six months!” wailed Mathilde.
“With your whole life before you?” her grandfather returned wistfully.
“I’m afraid I am asking a little more than that, Papa,” said Adelaide. “I have never been enthusiastic about this engagement, but while I was watching and trying to be coöperative, it seems Mr. Wayne intended to run off with my daughter. I know Mathilde is young and easily influenced, but I don’t think, I don’t really think,”—Adelaide made it evident that she was being just,—“that any other of all the young men who come to the house would have tried to do that, and none of them would have got themselves into this difficulty. I mean,”—she looked up at Wayne,—“I think almost any of them would have had a little better business judgment than you have shown.”
“Mama,” put in her daughter, “can’t you see how honest it was of Pete not to go, anyhow?”