Adelle nodded.
"We thought that would be the quickest way to settle it, as you know all about the property."
"The young man will have his journey for nothing," the president said grimly.
Then he took Adelle to task in the same patronizing, moral tone he had used to her on the occasion of her marriage.
"My dear young woman, you have acted in this matter very inadvisedly, very rashly!"
That was her unfortunate habit, he seemed to say, to act rashly. The irony of it all was that Adelle, who acted so rarely of her own initiative, should be exposed to this charge in the two most important instances when she had acted of her own volition and acted promptly!
"You see now how disastrous any such course as you proposed would be for you and for many others." (He was thinking chiefly of his board of directors and the gentlemen who had profited through the Clark's Field Associates, but he put it in the altruistic way.) "Fortunately, you can do no great harm to these innocent persons. The titles to Clark's Field we firmly believe are unassailable, impregnable. No court in this State would void those titles after they have once been quieted. You have merely aroused false hopes, I am afraid, and the spirit of greed in a lot of ignorant poor people,—who unless they are well advised will waste their savings in a vain attempt to get property that doesn't belong to them."
His tone was both moral and reproving. He wanted her to feel that, whereas she had thought she was doing a generous and high-minded thing by communicating to this lost tribe of Clarks her knowledge of their outlawed opportunity for riches, she had in reality merely made trouble for every one including herself.
"You are a woman," Mr. Solomon Smith continued severely, "and naturally ignorant of business and law. It is a pity that you did not consult some one, some strong, sensible person whose judgment you could rely on, and not fly off at a tangent on a foolish ideal!... By the way, where is your husband?"
"In California," Adelle replied sulkily.