“But I would try so hard,” said Mathilde. “I would learn; I—”
“Mathilde,” interrupted her mother, “when a lady tells you you are not good enough for her son, you must not protest.”
“Come, come, Adelaide, there is no use in being disagreeable,” said Mr. Lanley.
“Disagreeable!” returned his daughter. “Mrs. Wayne and I are entirely agreed. She thinks her son too good for my daughter, and I think my daughter too good for her son. Really, there seems nothing more to be said. Good-by, Mr. Wayne.” She held out her long, white hand to him. Mrs. Wayne was trying to make her position clearer to Mathilde, but Pete thought this an undesirable moment for such an attempt.
Partly as an assertion of his rights, partly because she looked so young and helpless, he stooped and kissed her.
“I’ll come and see you about half-past ten tomorrow morning,” he said very clearly, so that every one could hear. Adelaide looked blank; she was thinking that on Pringle she could absolutely depend. Wayne saw his mother and Lanley bow to each other, and the next moment he had contrived to get her out of the house.
Mathilde rushed away to her own room, and Adelaide and her father were left alone. She turned to him with one of her rare caresses.
“Dear Papa,” she said, “what a comfort you are to me! What should I do without you? You’ll never desert me, will you?” And she put her head on his shoulder. He patted her with an absent-minded rhythm, and then he said, as if he were answering some secret train of thought:
“I don’t see what else I could have done.”
“You couldn’t have done anything else,” replied his daughter, still nestling against him. “But Mrs. Baxter had frightened me with her account of your sentimental admiration for Mrs. Wayne, and I thought you might want to make yourself agreeable to her at the expense of my poor child.”