Isabelle cabled Fosdick to bring Vickers with him to Paris and started with her mother. "No sermons, you know, mother," she warned Mrs. Price. "It's something you and I don't understand."
When Vickers came to their hotel in Paris, it seemed to Isabelle that the last two years had worked more damage than the previous six. There was a dazed and submissive air about her brother that brought the tears to her eyes. In the languid, colorless face before her, she could scarcely find a trace of the pale, tense boy, who had roused her in the middle of the night the day before he left St. Louis….
"Why don't you come to this hotel?" Mrs. Price had demanded.
Vickers had made an excuse, and when his mother had left the room, he said to Isabelle, "You will have to explain to mother that I am not alone."
Isabelle gasped, and Vickers hastened to say, "You see Delia is with me."
"Dick wrote me that she left her child!"
"Yes…. I am really very fond of the poor little thing."
"The beast!" Isabelle muttered.
Vickers shuddered, and Isabelle resolved that no matter what happened she would not allow herself to refer again to either mother or child. Later she walked back with him to his rooms and saw the girl. Delia Conry was a heavily built and homely girl of thirteen, with light gray eyes. All but the eyes were like her father, the builder. There was no hint of the mother's soft, seductive physique.
"Delia," Vickers said gently, "come and speak to my sister, Mrs. Lane."