A knock at the door made his mother start.
"Another reporter!" she whispered. "They're pestering me still."
Victor rose with a spring. "I'll attend to this reporter business," he said, hotly.
"No," interposed Mrs. Joyce; "let me go, please!"
He submitted, and she went to meet the intruder. Her quiet, authoritative voice could be heard saying: "Mrs. Ollnee is not able to see any one. That cruel and false article of yesterday has completely upset her.—No, I am only her friend and nurse. I have nothing to say except that the article in the Star was false and malignant."
Thereupon she closed and locked the door and came back quite serious. "They've been coming almost every hour, determined to see your mother. I would have taken her away, only she persisted in saying she must remain here till you returned."
"Have you been here all day?" he asked, moved by the thought of her loyalty.
His mother answered. "Louise came about ten this morning—and except for an hour at lunch we've both been here waiting, listening."
This devotion on the part of a rich and busy woman was deeply revealing. The youth was being educated swiftly into new conceptions of human nature. His mother was neither beautiful nor wise nor witty. Why should she attract and hold a lady like Mrs. Joyce? He wondered if she had been quite honest with him. Would her interest be the same if The Voices had not enriched her?
She returned to her invitations. "Now put on your dinner-suit and come with us," she insisted. "My niece, Leo, will be there—surely you will respond to that lure?"