The tide had carried Olive Treadwell out into midstream—it was sink or swim now!
"I will do so. I cannot bear to see you duped by your adopted—shall I say, son?"
"I have never held the position of father to young Morley. I've helped him to find himself as I have many another young man. He has no reason to dupe me. We understand each other fairly well; better, I think than most old men and young ones."
"Exactly! That is what you think."
"It is."
"Very well, then listen. Remember I would not have come to you if I had not had evidence. You take exception to Lans and his ways of life, I have been informed that you have even called him a—a—libertine!"
"With modifications—yes!"
"I do not ask, Mr. Markham, that you try to withhold your judgments until you know all the facts about my boy. You were never fair to him; you saw him—you see him now—through his father, my poor brother!"
"Madam, for his mother's sake I have always kept in touch with his career even when I knew he was beyond any caution or judgment of mine. I know that he has shamefully compromised a young woman and quite openly flaunts his relations with her by calling them some new-fangled name. Perhaps I am a narrow-gauge man, madam. All my life I have been obliged to travel from a certain point to a certain point—I'm made that way. I have endeavoured to look about to help my fellow-men, when I could in justice do so, but I have stuck to the tracks that seem to me to lead safely through the land of my journey. I am not interested in branch roads or sidings."
Mrs. Treadwell was a bit breathless and angry but she was too far from shore yet to indulge in relaxation.