Bartol said to Mrs. Ollnee: "Would you mind dressing for the performance? I'd like you to go with Mrs. Joyce and Marie, and clothe yourself in all black if possible, so that I can say you came into my study not merely searched, but re-clothed."
She said, quite simply: "I have no objection at all. I am in your hands."
After the older women left the room Victor drew near to Leo with a low word. "Poor little mother! she is in the hands of the inquisition to-night."
Thrilling to the excitement of the hour, she forgot her resentful superior pose. "Isn't that little man magnificent? Why didn't you go in for civil engineering or chemistry?"
"Because no one had sense enough to advise me," he bitterly answered.
"Think where that funny little body has carried that head," she continued, still studying Stinchfield. "If he had only been given shoulders like yours—"
"I'm glad you like something about me."
"I was speaking of your body as a machine for carrying a brain around over the earth."
"You seem to think of me as having no brain."
"Oh, not quite so bad as that. You have a brain, but it's undeveloped."