"Wilfred?" the mother repeated, with a rising inflection.
"Yes, Wilfred; you were speaking of him, were you not?" The Mariposa's green eyes sparkled with mirth. "Well, madame"—she spoke negligently—"what can I do for you? You know I do not receive any one professionally on Sunday."
"Would you regard it as professional if I ask you what you are going to do about my son?"
"Not at all. I think it quite natural that you should wish to know. I can quite appreciate your state of mind, maternal anxiety, and all that. To have been in terror for fear your son would marry Marcia Oldham and then discover that he is really interested in me! It illuminates that passage in Paradise Lost, does it not? It is sometimes considered obscure. You doubtless recall it. Something about 'and in the lowest depths a lower depth was found.'"
"You seem to have some appreciation of the situation," said the old woman grimly.
"Believe me, I have. Only the mask smiles Comedy at me, and Tragedy at you. Madame, why do you cluck so over your one chicken?"
"The answer to that," Mrs. Ames tartly replied, "is first Miss Oldham and then yourself."
"The declining scale! Fancy where he will end!" Ydo murmured.
"It may be a circus‑rider yet," admitted his mother.
"I have been one," announced Ydo calmly, and Hayden could not tell whether she spoke the truth or fiction. "Well"—there was a touch of impatience in her tones now—"what do you wish me to do?" She lifted a fan from her lap, and rapidly furled and unfurled it, a sure sign of irritation with her. "Find him a pretty doll with a blue sash and a wreath of daisies? You must have urged many a one on him and see to what they have driven him."