“But,” he asked, “did you consult Adelaide?”
Farron shook his head.
“But, Vincent, was that quite loyal?”
A change in Farron’s expression made Mr. Lanley turn his head, and he saw that Adelaide had come into the room. Her appearance bore out the legend of her headache: she looked like a garden after an early frost. But perhaps the most terrifying thing about her aspect was her complete indifference to it. A recollection suddenly came to Mr. Lanley of a railway accident that he and Adelaide had been in. He had seen her stepping toward him through the debris, buttoning her gloves. She was far beyond such considerations now.
She had come to put her very life to the test. There was one hope, there was one way in which Vincent could rehabilitate himself, and that was by showing himself victor in the hardest of all struggles, the personal struggle with her. That would be hard, because she would make it so, if she perished in the attempt.
The crisis came in the first meeting of their eyes. If his glance had said: “My poor dear, you’re tired. Rest. All will be well,” his cause would have been lost. But his glance said nothing, only studied her coolly, and she began to speak.
“Oh, Papa, Vincent does not consider such minor points as loyalty to me.” Her voice and manner left Mr. Lanley in no doubt that if he stayed an instant he would witness a domestic quarrel. The idea shocked him unspeakably. That these two reserved and dignified people should quarrel at all was bad enough, but that they should have reached a point where they were indifferent to the presence of a third person was terrible. He got himself out of the room without ceremony, but not before he saw Vincent rise and heard the first words of his sentence:
“And what right have you to speak of loyalty?” Here, fortunately, Lanley shut the door behind him, for Vincent’s next words would have shocked him still more: “A prostitute would have stuck better to a man when he was ill.”
But Adelaide was now in good fighting trim. She laughed out loud.
“Really, Vincent,” she said, “your language! You must make your complaint against me a little more definite.”