She was silent, wishing him to go on; she had wondered just how he would approach her on this subject. “I was very greatly embarrassed, I need hardly tell you, to have her looking me up in that way. Very likely she has written you of her call. You may be sure that I was as courteous as possible, but her manner was not just what I should have liked to have my wife’s mother manifest toward me. I have rarely in my life been so pained by any occurrence.” Some reply was necessary and Mrs. Craighill was prepared. “I don’t quite understand the spirit that prompts you to speak to me of my mother in this way. She is mistress of her own affairs and she does not go abroad or do anything else merely to please me. It is necessary for me to remember that she is my mother, even though you are anxious to forget it.” “But, my dear Adelaide, when the visit to the Brodericks’ was so important from every standpoint, don’t you see in what a position it placed me to have Mrs. Allen demanding at the door to see me? It really spoiled what would otherwise have been a very delightful visit.” “It was unfortunate, as you say,” she replied coldly, though her heart beat fast with the joy of her opportunity. “It was most unfortunate and I deeply regret it. Nothing could have been sadder than for you to have been ashamed to take me to visit the great Brodericks and then to have my mother tumbling in on you, creating, no doubt, an embarrassing encounter with the servant at the sacred door.” “Adelaide! I don’t understand you--you can’t be aware of what you are saying!” “I am quite aware of what you have said. You had every expectation of taking me to Boston with you. And I had every expectation of going. But when the Brodericks wrote and asked you to their house, wholly ignoring me, you made it very easy for me to stay at home. The whole thing was as plain as that coffee pot.” “You are most unjust! I didn’t believe you capable of harbouring such thoughts of me.” “I had to harbour them when they sailed so boldly into port. It was all perfectly obvious.” “You are not only unfair to me, but to the Brodericks as well. They had just returned after a long absence and the cards announcing our marriage had failed to reach them.” “And you took advantage of their ignorance to accept an invitation for yourself without daring to suggest that there was a wife to consider. There _wasn’t_ a wife to consider--she didn’t have to be considered!--that’s all there is to that.” “I explained all that to you--that night when the letter came--that I didn’t know them well enough to suggest that they include another guest; and that, moreover, I was invited rather impersonally, and I thought that it was to give me a chance to meet Senator Tarleton and have an opportunity, impossible elsewhere, to interest him in our reform work.”