"She could have countermanded the order."
"She didn't know it till the guests were there. I was with her when she discovered it, and she took it like a heroine. She was perfectly helpless. She couldn't make a scene in her own house, and she couldn't reasonably be expected to send her guests home. She knew exactly what was bound to happen, what she couldn't help happening, and she kept her head steady and faced the thing as boldly as she could. I never thought you would be the one to go back on her, Thayer."
Thayer started to speak. Then he squared his jaw, and was silent. After a long interval, he said humbly,—
"I have wronged your cousin, Dane. I am very sorry."
"So am I," Bobby returned flatly. "Beatrix has come to where she needs every friend she owns in the world to stand by her. By to-night, the story of that supper will have spread from the Battery to Poughkeepsie bridge. It will be garbled and twisted into all manner of shapes, and it will come boomeranging back at her from every quarter of the town. When it comes to gossip, we find Manhattan Island is a mighty small place; but I suppose Australia is just as bad."
Thayer interrupted his meditations ruthlessly.
"How is Lorimer, this morning? You've been to the house, I suppose."
"Yes, I've just come from there. Lorimer is convalescent, which means he is a blamed sight better than he deserves to be. I didn't care to see him; but they assured me he was sitting up and regaling himself on raw oysters and chicken broth. He is probably an edifying spectacle by this time, a mush of maudlin penitence. I've seen him before this in his next-morning mood. Put not your trust in a moral jellyfish!" And Bobby, his fists in his pockets, stamped up and down the room to ease his resentment. "The next move is to be a radical one," he continued, after a pause. "They are going into the Adirondacks."
Thayer looked up sharply.
"They? Who?"