"Good afternoon, Miss Vint—let me present you to my aunt, Mrs. Ba—oh, come, now, aunty's a woman of the world and she's married, too. There's no reason on earth why you shouldn't."
"But, doctor, you know what I am——"
"I know," he said kindly, and the real sympathy in his boy's eyes struck moisture into my own, "I know. But you're living it down—no woman could do more."
"Really?" she begged, her features working, "really, doctor? Heaven knows I try!"
"And you never slip back. You never slip back!" he said slowly and emphatically. "Just think what that: means, Miss Vint!"
We nodded at each other and she hurried off, almost smiling.
"She looks no more insane than I do," I suggested, and again he shrugged.
"There's where it is," he answered quietly; "she's just a little over the line, that's all. She's Levi B. Vint's daughter, you know."
"Really!"
"I'd hate to think what she pays a week. What she's really worrying about, I believe, is the old man's money. She insists he was all right, you know, and all this exposure business, though it couldn't shake her trust in the old scoundrel, got on her nerves and she got worrying over herself. Everybody argued with her—the whole Vint gang are a set of bronze mules, you know—and finally she arrived at a definite idée fixe: I'm sure it could have been prevented. Anyway, she thinks she's—she's all sorts of a bad lot, you know. She won't speak to the girls here—not even to the maids. She says she might corrupt them."