“If that is quite all,” she said sweetly, “I will tell you something. What you have said to me about my mother is not what I expected from you. I know her far better than you do; and now that you have discussed the matter so frankly on your side--how absurd that we should have taken sides!--I will be frank, too, and tell you that one of the reasons for which I married you was to escape from her. I thought, from your showing of respect and affection for me, that I should find in Colonel Craighill a champion and a friend if not quite the ideal lover. And now at the first sign of trouble, at the first opportunity you had to prove my confidence and faith, you not only threw me aside to avoid showing me to your critical acquaintances, but you would wound me by flinging at me my mother--my mother who has never been anything but hateful to me--who would have made traffic of me and sunk me low for her own ends.” The last words came from her slowly; tears were in her eyes as she rose to her full height and faced him. “And now,” she ended, “I will say to you that my mother will not trouble you; that she will not”--and Walsh’s words came back to her and she felt secure and comforted as she remembered him--“she will not now, or at any other time, honour this house with her presence.” CHAPTER XXVI COLONEL CRAIGHILL SCORES A POINT Colonel Craighill reached his office in anything but an amiable state of mind. As he disappeared into his own room and closed the door the chief book-keeper exchanged a wink with the prettiest stenographer, and the messenger turned up the collar of his coat to signify falling temperature. At his own desk Colonel Craighill scanned the summarized reports that were so sufficient to his executive sense, but this inspection gave him no pleasure; and his personal mail disclosed matters that did not please him. And against all precedents the cashier entered unbidden, bearing memoranda that deepened the annoyance that Colonel Craighill had carried to the office. And, crowning irritation, the president of the Hercules National Bank, in which he was a director, and the cashier of the Greater City Trust Company called him by telephone and begged his early attendance at their offices. In his perturbation Colonel Craighill narrowly escaped referring his own cashier to Walsh; and the fact that Walsh would, just at this moment, have been a substantial reed to lean upon did not ease Colonel Craighill’s burdens. “Ask Walsh,” had been, in old times, before the Wayne-Craighill Mercantile Company passed into Walsh’s hands, the commonest phrase of the office; and Walsh’s successor could not, in the nature of things, know the inner history of the many Craighill interests as Tom Walsh had. Several times within the past month, “Ask Wayne” had been heard in the outer offices; and this was not more remarkable than that, when the appeal had been made, it was found that Wayne knew!