he against Marty Burke? And if he had none, how stripped he would
appear in her eyes!

"Won't you ask him, Mrs. Farron?"

Adelaide recoiled. She did not want to be the one to throw her glove
among the lions.

"I don't think I understand well enough what it is you want. Why don't
you ask him yourself?" She hesitated, knowing that no opportunity for
this would offer unless she herself arranged it. "Why don't you come and
dine with us to-night, and," she added more slowly, "bring your son?"

She had made the bait very attractive, and Mrs. Wayne did not refuse.




CHAPTER VI


As she drove home, Adelaide's whole being was stirred by the prospect of
that conflict between Burke and her husband, and it was not until she saw
Mathilde, pale with an hour of waiting, that she recalled the real object
of her recent visit. Not, of course, that Adelaide was more interested in
Marty Burke than in her daughter's future, but a titanic struggle fired
her imagination more than a pitiful little romance. She felt a pang of
self-reproach when she saw that Mr. Lanley had come to share the child's
vigil, that he seemed to be suffering under an anxiety almost as keen as
Mathilde's.