Mr. Lanley smiled at her, and then, springing up, kissed her tenderly on the forehead. He said it was time for him to be going on.
“You’ll come to dinner to-night, Papa?”
Rather hastily, Mr. Lanley said no, he couldn’t; he had an engagement. But his daughter did not let him get to the door.
“What are you going to do to-night, Papa?” she asked, firmly.
“There is a governor’s meeting—”
“Two in a week, Papa?”
Suddenly Mr. Lanley dropped all pretense of not coming, and said he would be there at eight.
During the rest of the day Mathilde’s heart never wholly regained its normal beat. Not only was she to see Pete again, and see him under the gaze of her united family, but she was to see this mother of his, whom he loved and admired so much. She pictured her as white-haired, benignant, brooding, the essential mother, with all her own mother’s grace and charm left out, yet with these qualities not ill replaced by others which Mathilde sometimes dimly apprehended were lacking in her own beautiful parent. She looked at herself in the glass. “My son’s wife,” was the phrase in her mind.
On her way up-stairs to dress for dinner she tried to confide her anxieties to her mother.
“Mama,” she said, “if you had a son, how would you feel toward the girl he wanted to marry?”