“Henry, I don’t understand you. You’ve let this thing go on without speaking. You approved——”
“No, I didn’t approve,” he said quickly. “I merely acquiesced.”
Mrs. Loring showed signs of inward agitation.
“Oh, I give her up. I’ve done the best I could. She has behaved very badly and I—I don’t know what to think of her.” She began sobbing into her handkerchief and renewed her familiar plaint. “I do the best I can for her—for you, but you’re always going against me—both of you. I’ve tried so hard this winter—kept going when my nerves were on the ragged edge of collapse, just because I thought it was my duty——”
“There, there, Mother, don’t be foolish,” said Loring soothingly. “Jane is young, too young to marry anyway. She’ll decide some day.”
“No. I know her. She makes up her mind to a thing and she’ll cling to it until death. She’s like you in that way. She would rather die than change. I ought to have realized that. If she can’t marry Phil Gallatin, she won’t marry any one. Phil Gallatin,” she cried, “the least desirable young man in New York, a man without a character, without friends, the last of a tainted stock, a fortune hunter, dissolute——”
He let her go on until she had exhausted both her adjectives and her nerves while he listened thoughtfully, and then asked,
“You’re sure she still loves Mr. Gallatin?”
“I’ve tried to believe that she would forget him—that she would learn to care for Mr. Van Duyn. But she hasn’t. She has never been the same girl since you told her about that dreadful Jaffray woman. I’m afraid she’ll be sick—really sick. But I can’t do anything. What can I do?” The poor lady looked up plaintively, but her husband had walked to the window and was looking out into the Avenue.
“Humph!” he grunted. “Lovesick, eh? There ought to be a cure for that.”