"He knows nothing of it at all," she confessed. "He is too proud to let anybody speak for him, just as under the circumstances he is too proud to speak for himself. Besides, he is poor, and all your friends would say he was after your money. No, nothing would induce him to speak for himself. He is very unhappy about it all; but he feels far worse for you than for himself. Dear Jack! He is the most generous fellow in the world." "Poor Jack!" May murmured softly. "Poor Jack!" the widow echoed, with a deep-drawn sigh. "It frightens me so to think what might happen if he hears the Count boasting in his insolent way. Foreigners always boast of their conquests! Why, May, there's no knowing what he might do! And the scandal of it for you! And what should I do if anything happened to Jack?" Perhaps an appeal most surely touches the feminine heart if it be a little incoherent. A pedant might have objected that Mrs. Neligage in this brief speech altered the point of view with reckless frequency, but the pedant would by the effect have been proved to be wrong. The jumble of possibilities and of consequences, of woe to Jack, harm to May, and of general inconsolability on the part of the mother finished the conquest of the girl completely. She was henceforth only eager to do whatever Mrs. Neligage directed, and under the instigation of her astute counsellor wrote a note to the young man, accepting a proposal which he had never heard of, and imploring him as her accepted lover to rescue from the hands of Count Shimbowski the letter addressed to Christopher Calumus. It is not every orator, even among the greatest, who can boast of having achieved a triumph so speedy and so complete as that which gladdened the heart of Mrs. Neligage when, after consoling and cheering her promised daughter-in-law, she set out to find her son. XVI THE DUTY OF A SON Simple were this world if it were governed by frankness, albeit perchance in some slight particulars less interesting. Certainly if straightforwardness ruled life, Mrs. Neligage would have fared differently in her efforts that morning. She would have had no opportunity in that case of displaying her remarkable astuteness, and she would have left the life-threads of divers young folk to run more smoothly. Knots and tangles in the lives of mortals are oftener introduced by their fellows than by the unkindly fingers of the Fates, although the blame must be borne by the weird sisters. The three might well stand aghast that forenoon to see the deftness with which Mrs. Neligage wrought her mischief. A fisherman with his netting-needle and a kitten playing with the twine together produce less complication of the threads than the widow that day brought about by the unaided power of her wits.