“I do wish Mr. Farron would try.”
“Try,” thought Adelaide, “and fail?” Could she stand that? Was her whole relation to Vincent about to be put to the test? What weapons had he against Marty Burke? And if he had none, how stripped he would appear in her eyes!
“Won’t you ask him, Mrs. Farron?”
Adelaide recoiled. She did not want to be the one to throw her glove among the lions.
“I don’t think I understand well enough what it is you want. Why don’t you ask him yourself?” She hesitated, knowing that no opportunity for this would offer unless she herself arranged it. “Why don’t you come and dine with us to-night, and,” she added more slowly, “bring your son?”
She had made the bait very attractive, and Mrs. Wayne did not refuse.
CHAPTER VI
As she drove home, Adelaide’s whole being was stirred by the prospect of that conflict between Burke and her husband, and it was not until she saw Mathilde, pale with an hour of waiting, that she recalled the real object of her recent visit. Not, of course, that Adelaide was more interested in Marty Burke than in her daughter’s future, but a titanic struggle fired her imagination more than a pitiful little romance. She felt a pang of self-reproach when she saw that Mr. Lanley had come to share the child’s vigil, that he seemed to be suffering under an anxiety almost as keen as Mathilde’s.
They did not have to question her; she threw out her hands, casting her muff from her as she did so.
“Oh,” she said, “I’m a weak, soft-hearted creature! I’ve asked them both to dine tonight.”