"Oh, I want nothing. It's Mrs. Wayne who wants you to do
something--rather difficult, too, I should imagine."

He turned gravely to their guest.

"What is it you want, Mrs. Wayne?"

Mrs. Wayne considered an instant, and as she was about to find words for
her request her son spoke:

"She'll tell you after dinner."

"Pete, I wasn't going to tell the story," his mother put in protestingly.
"You really do me injustice at times."

Adelaide, remembering the conversation of the morning, wondered whether
he did. She felt grateful to him for wishing to spare Mathilde the
hearing of such a story, and she turned to him with a caressing
graciousness in which she was extremely at her ease. Mathilde,
recognizing that her mother was pleased, though not being very clear why,
could not resist joining in their conversation; and Mrs. Wayne was thus
given an opportunity of murmuring the unfortunate Anita's story into
Vincent's ear.

Adelaide, holding Pete with a flattering gaze, seeming to drink in every
word he was saying, heard Mrs. Wayne finish and heard Vincent say:

"And you think you can get it annulled if only Burke doesn't interfere?"