"Extry! Extry!" he announced to Isabel. "All about the reconciliation of trust magnate with beautiful though erring daughter! Extry! All about the soothing and emollient influence of a little packet of stamped paper! No, I've not gone suddenly insane, and I'll come home about four, for we are due for tea at the residence of Mr. and Mrs. John M. Hurd."
To Deerfield Street, also, the glad word presently went, to meet there the sincere congratulations of Miss Helen Maitland, who held the other end of the jubilant telephone.
"You'd better come, too, Helen. We'll stop for you. I really think it would be much smoother if you were along. And besides, Charlie says we ought to get father on record before a witness in case a conservative turn takes him again."
"I was rather expecting to have tea here," Miss Maitland confessed, after a moment's hesitancy. "Yes, Mr. Smith said he would probably come. Very well—I will bring him along, if you'd really like to have him, with great pleasure. You'll call for us, Isabel? Au revoir, then."
It was shortly after five o'clock when the Hurds' butler opened the front door to admit a company of four. These intruders, waiting no bidding and ignoring altogether the fact that one of their number had been forbidden the house, made their cheerful way, headed by Mrs. Wilkinson, into the drawing room, there to greet with effusive welcome a stern-faced, elderly lady, who met them with a broad smile, but who almost instantly, to her own infinite surprise and discomfiture, burst into tears. These rapidly abated, when there was heard a sound in the hall, a sound which the quick ears of Mr. Wilkinson distinguished at once.
"The lion comes!" he murmured in Isabel's ear; and an involuntary hush descended upon the company. Thud, thud, thud—the firm steps approached; the arras was drawn back by a deliberate hand; and into the drawing room, his manner as easy and composed as ever, came Mr. Hurd. Two steps he made inside the room, then stopped. His glance instantly comprehended the little company, and just for a moment the old, cold light shot into his eye. But it was only for a moment.
"My dear Isabel, I am very glad to see you home again."
The greeting which the financier would have extended to his other guests was lost forever in the impulsive rush which landed Mrs. Wilkinson in her father's arms. Any regret which may have lingered was banished in the shock of this impact; and it was a resigned parent who emerged from this embrace to resume his corner in the reunited world.
It remained for his son-in-law to pronounce the valedictory over the vanishing fragments of the family breach.
"Mr. Hurd, ever since the day you flung in my astounded face my character and attainments, depicted in simple but effective words of one syllable, I have felt that there was not only force, but a good deal of truth, in your pungent observations. As I remember telling you at the time, had I appreciated the disgraceful facts as you summed them up, I could only in justice to Isabel have joined my efforts to your own in endeavoring to prevent so fatal an alliance. But it was too late. And now that the thing is done, the child of Mr. Hurd, having inherited some of that gentleman's fixity of purpose and tenacity of idea, is still of the opinion—Isabel, even if I am wrong, please do not contradict me—that she needs the stimulus of my desultory presence to keep her en rapport with life. Isabel has come to find strangely piquant the sensation of uncertainty as to the approaching meal. She has come to feel that certainty in such a matter is a species of bourgeoisie. At all events we are now Mr. and Mrs. Wilkinson; and however deeply we regret the lack of enthusiasm in that connection of my esteemed father-in-law, I can only suggest to him that, although probably no one in the world has as poor an opinion of me as he has, if he keeps that opinion to himself there is no reason why the world in general should ever learn the truth. Certainly it shall be my life work to prevent it; and maybe when in the years to come I am passing the plate in some far suburban tabernacle of worship, all will be forgotten. Helen, may I trouble you to hand me those sandwiches?"