"It's no affair of Doctor Dacer's whose house it is," answered Mrs. Hazlitt with dignity. "You see, a mother's relation with a daughter is too intimate, too tender--" "I hope a father's may be both." "I suppose it might, but it's not like a mother's. She respects you deeply, Jim. I've brought her up to that." "Have you, Alita?" A hint of skepticism in his voice wounded Mr. Hazlitt. "Of course I have," she answered. "Why, what do you mean? Are you trying to suggest--how unjust! Lita," she added, as her daughter entered, "have I ever said a word that could in any way reflect on your father? Haven't I always brought you up to respect him?" Lita looked at them reflectively. She had, in her time, told a great many untruths for their sake. Now that she had them here together, she rather thought it would be a good idea to tell them the truth. As she paused, her mother repeated her question even more emphatically: "Have I ever said anything to prejudice you against your father?" "Why, of course you have, mother," she said. Her father gave a short, bitter laugh, and she turned on him. "And so have you, Pat--only not so often as mother." "How can you be so disloyal?" cried her mother, her eyes getting larger than ever. "How can I be anything else? You two make me disloyal." "Remember you are speaking to your mother," said Hazlitt protectingly. "And to you, too, Pat," answered his daughter calmly. "You've each wanted me to hate the other one, and you've both been as open about it as you dared to be. It was always like giving mother a Christmas present if I said anything disagreeable about you. And your cold gray eye would light up, Pat, if I criticized anything about her." "Divorced or not, we are your parents, please remember," said Hazlitt. "You don't always remember it yourselves," the girl answered. "Parents! You seem sometimes as if you were just two enemies trying to injure each other through me." Mrs. Hazlitt was already standing, and she drew a step nearer her former husband. "Jim," she wailed, "aren't they terrible--these young people? And I thought she loved me!" "I do love you, mother," said Lita; "I love you dearly--better than I love Pat, only I can't help seeing that he behaves better. Or perhaps not. Women understand the art of undermining better than men do. I think Pat did all he knew how. You both filled my mind with poison against the other, drop by drop. Oh, you don't know how dreadful it is to be poisoned all the time by the two people you love best in the world!" Mrs. Hazlitt looked up into the face of her former husband, as to an oracle. "Do you think it's our divorce she's talking about?" "Of course it isn't, mother," Lita answered. "I see you had a perfect right not to be husband and wife any more if you didn't want to be; but you couldn't change the fact that you are still my parents. You ought to be able to coöperate about me, to present a united front."