Louise, as often before, was stunned by the palpable contradiction afforded by her mother's tears over what she called her lonesomeness and, in the next moment, her dry-eyed approval of a trip that would place an ocean between them. She wanted to go with Laura and she meant to go; but she was conscious of a sinking of the heart when she found that, far from seeking to deter her, her mother appeared not only willing but anxious to have her go. Mrs. Treharne's one thought, of course, was that the trip would give her a breathing spell, "give her a chance to think," as she futilely expressed it to herself; for her life had become one continuous procrastination. Louise, she considered, would be "broadened by travel" and sheared of some of her "old-fashioned notions." And, while Louise was gone, she herself could "think things over" and block out a course. A misty, intangible idea of abandoning Judd already had crept into her mind, in her self-searching, self-contemning moments; perhaps, while Louise was across the sea, she might be able to evolve some plan whereby——And here her musings halted when she came plumb upon the thought of the surrender of luxuries that her abandonment of Judd would involve, the scrimping and saving of a "narrow, smug existence with smug, narrow people." Anyhow, Louise's absence from the scene would "give her time to think." That was the main point.
But Louise, who had been lonesome for her mother, now found herself lonesome in her mother's presence.
Judd met Langdon Jesse at the club a few nights later.
"Judd," Jesse sneered, "you are, all in all, about the most accomplished damned blunderer in the Western Hemisphere, aren't you?"
"That will be about all of that from you," growled Judd in reply. He had got out of the cotton market with, as he put it, an "unpunctured pelt," so that he had no present fear of the vindictive machinations of the younger man. "A civil tongue between your teeth henceforth in your dealings with me, or we don't deal. Do you get that?"
"Oh!" said Jesse, eloquently. He surrendered the whip hand with his customary deftness. "But you'll remember, I suppose," going on suavely, "that you told me that Miss Treharne was a virtual dependent of yours?"
"Well," snarled Judd, "supposing I really thought so? How about that?"
"Oh, if you really thought so, why of course that's different," said Jesse, graciously. "But you were pretty wrong, weren't you? You separated her from her mother on that presumption by bawling at her as if she had been a chambermaid; and all the time she was virtually, as she is now in fact, under the guardianship of that toploftical Blythe fellow; she is living with Mrs. Stedham, with whom she starts for Europe in a few days, and she is more than amply provided for by her father. In all candor, and between man and man, could you possibly have botched things worse than you did upon your mistaken premise?"
"You mean botched the thing so far as you are concerned, eh?" growled Judd. "Well, things were botched for you in that direction before you ever started. You've been kicking around long enough to know when you're left at the post; but you don't know it, all the same. Anyhow, count me out of your confounded woman-hunting schemes in future, understand? I've got enough to do to attend to my own game. Play your own hand. But you're butting your head against a stone wall in this one instance, let me tell you that."