"Good-by, father!" he said slowly, tenderly.
"You'll see your mother?"
"Yes—I'm going there now."
Thus father and son parted.
* * * * *
Nothing, it seemed to Vickers, after this painful half hour, could be as miserable as what he had been through, and as a matter of fact his interview with his mother was comparatively easy.
To Mrs. Price her son's determination was merely an unexpected outburst of wild folly, such as happened in other families,—coming rather late in Vick's life, but by no means irremediable. Vickers had fallen into the hands of a designing woman, who intended to capture a rich man's son. Her first thought was that the Colonel would have to buy Mrs. Conry off, as Mr. Stewart had done in a similar accident that befell Ted Stewart, and when Vickers finally made it plain to her that his was not that kind of case, she fell to berating him for the scandal he would create by "trapesing off to Europe with a singer." Oddly enough that delicate modesty, like a woman's, which had made it almost impossible for the Colonel to mention the affair, did not seem to trouble her. To live with another man's wife was in the Colonel's eyes a sin little short of incest, and more shocking than many kinds of murder. But his wife, with a deeper comprehension of the powers of her sex, of the appeal of woman to man, saw in it merely a weakness that threatened to become a family disgrace. When she found after an hour's talk that her arguments made no impression, while Vickers sat, harassed and silent, his head resting on his hands, she burst into tears.
"It's just like those things you read of in the papers," she sobbed, "those queer Pittsburg people, who are always doing some nasty thing, and no decent folks will associate with them."
"It's not the thing you do, mother; it's the way you do it, the purpose, the feeling," the young man protested. "And there won't be a scandal, if that's what's troubling you. You can tell your friends that I have gone abroad suddenly for my health."
"Who would believe that? Do you think her husband's going to keep quiet?"
Mrs. Price sniffled, with considerable worldly wisdom.