As she looked at him she became aware that he was growing slowly pale. He was standing, and he put his hand out to the mantelpiece to steady himself. She thought he was going to faint. “Vincent,” she said, “let me help you to the sofa.” She wanted now to see him falter, to feel his hand on her shoulder, anything for a closer touch with him. For half a minute, perhaps, they remained motionless, and then the color began to come back into his face. He smiled bitterly. “They tell me you are such a good sick nurse, Mrs. Farron,” he said, “so considerate to the weak. But I don’t need your help, thank you.” She covered her face with her hands. He seemed to her stronger and more cruel than anything she had imagined. In a minute he left her alone. CHAPTER XVI Farron cared, perhaps, no more for appearances than Adelaide did, but his habitual manner was much better adapted to concealment. In him the fluctuations between the deepest depression and the highest elation were accompanied by such slight variations of look and tone that they escaped almost every one but Adelaide herself. He came down to dinner that evening, and while Adelaide sat in silence, with her elbows on the table and her long fingers clasping and unclasping themselves in a sort of rhythmic desperation, conversation went on pleasantly enough between Mathilde and Vincent. This was facilitated by the fact that Mathilde had now transferred to Vincent the flattering affection which she used to give to her grandfather. She agreed with, wondered at, and drank in every word. Naturally, Mathilde attributed her mother’s distress to the crisis in her own love-affairs. She had had no word with her as to Wayne’s new position, and it came to her in a flash that it would be daring, but wise, to take the matter up in the presence of her stepfather. So, as soon as they were in the drawing-room, and Farron had opened the evening paper, and his wife, with a wild decision, had opened a book, Mathilde ruthlessly interrupted them both, recalling them from what appeared to be the depths of absorptions in their respective pages by saying: “Mr. Farron, did you tell Mama what you had done about Pete?” Farron raised his eyes and said: “Yes.” “And what did she say?” “What is there for me to say?” answered Adelaide in the terrible, crisp voice that Mathilde hated. There was a pause. To Mathilde it seemed extraordinary the way older people sometimes stalled and shifted about perfectly obvious issues; but, wishing to be patient, she explained: “Don’t you see it makes some difference in our situation?” “The greatest, I should think,” said Adelaide, and just hinted that she might go back to her book at any instant. “But don’t you think--” Mathilde began again, when Farron interrupted her almost sharply. “Mathilde,” he said, “there’s a well-known business axiom, not to try to get things on paper too early.”