Taking Mrs. Pennington’s advice, as soon as she reached home she sought her mother’s room. Mrs. Loring was reclining at full length on a portable wooden table which had been set up in the middle of her large apartment, and an osteopath was busy manipulating her small body. There wasn’t really anything the matter with her except social fag, but she chose this method of rehabilitating her tired nerves instead of active exercise which she abhorred. It was almost with a feeling of pity that Jane sat beside her mother when the practitioner had departed, for she knew that a scene would follow her confidences. And she was not mistaken; for when half an hour later, Jane went to her own room, her mother was in a state of collapse upon her bed, and Jane’s nerves were singing like taut wires, while on her mind were unpleasantly impressed the final words of maternal recrimination. But Jane knew that in spite of the violence of her mother’s opposition, she was very much less to be dreaded than her father, and that by to-morrow she would be reconciled to her daughter’s point of view and even might be reckoned upon as an ally. Nor would she speak to Mr. Loring without her daughter’s acquiescence. This Jane had no intention of giving, for she was sure that a meeting of her father and Phil, which must, of course, ensue at once, was not to be looked forward to with pleasurable expectation.
It was therefore in no very happy mood that Jane met Phil Gallatin late that afternoon at the Suydams’ tea whence he went home with her. She had said nothing of her interview with her mother, and was relieved to learn at the house that Mrs. Loring had gone out.
She led Phil back into the library and they sat before the open fire.
“What is it, Jane?” he asked. “Are you regretting——?”
“No,” she smiled. “There isn’t room in my heart for regret. It’s full of—other things.”
“I’m very dense. Can you prove it?”
“I’ll try.”
The davenport was huge, but only one end of it complained of their weight.
“Phil, are you sure there is no mistake?”
“Positive.”