A faint smile came back to his mother's face. "I don't mind, Victor. I feel already that this has brought us closer together. Your father is here—he is smiling—and I am happier than I've been for weeks."
Victor dressed for his party with trembling limbs. It seemed as if he had passed through a tremendous battle wherein he had been defeated—and yet his heart was strangely light.
V
VICTOR RECEIVES A WARNING
Mrs. Joyce's house was a stone structure of rather characterless design which stood at the intersection of a wide boulevard and one of the narrower crosstown streets, but it seemed very palatial to Victor as he wonderingly entered its looming granite portal. His mother tripped up the stairs with the air of one who feels very much at home.
A man in snuff-colored livery took his hat and coat and ushered him into a large reception-room on the left, and there his hostess found him some ten minutes later. "Come and meet my brother from California," she said, and led the way across the hall into the library, where a tall man with gray hair and mustache was talking with a dark, alert and smoothly shaven man of middle age. The one Mrs. Joyce introduced as her brother, Mr. Wood, and the other as Mr. Carew.
Victor was relieved to have Miss Wood enter and greet him cordially, for the men did not seem to value him sufficiently to include him in their conversation. Mr. Wood was reserved and the tone of Carew's voice was cynical.
Leonora Wood was of that severe type of beauty which requires stately gowns, and Victor confessed that she was quite the finest figure of a girl he had ever met, but when Mrs. Joyce said, "You are to take Leo out to dinner" he merely bowed, resenting her amused smile.
His seat at table brought him next a very old lady—Mrs. Wood, senior—who beamed upon him with cheerful interest. There were several other women of that vague middle age which does not interest youth.