Her mind during the interval had been exclusively occupied with the position of that piece of blotting-paper. Could it be there was some other woman whose ghost-like presence she was just beginning to feel haunting their relation? The impersonality of Vincent’s manner was an armor against such attacks, but this armor, as Adelaide knew, was more apparent than real. If one could get beyond that, one was at the very heart of the man. If some fortuitous circumstance had brought a sudden accidental intimacy between him and another woman--What woman loving strength and power could resist the sight of Vincent in action, Vincent as she saw him? Yet with a good capacity for believing the worst of her fellow-creatures, Adelaide did not really believe in the other woman. That, she knew, would bring a change in the fundamentals of her relationship with her husband. This was only a barrier that left the relation itself untouched. Before very long she began to think the situation was all in her own imagination. He was so amused, so eager to talk. Silent as he was apt to be with the rest of the world, with her he sometimes showed a love of gossip that enchanted her. And now it seemed to her that he was leading her on from subject to subject through a childish dislike to going to bed. They were actually giggling over Mr. Lanley’s adventure when a motor-brake squeaked in the silence of the night, a motor-door slammed. For the first time Adelaide remembered her daughter. It was after twelve o’clock. A knock came at her door. She wrapped her swan’s-down garment about her and went to the door. “O Mama, have you been worried?” the girl asked. She was standing in the narrow corridor, with her arms full of shining favors; there could be no question whatever that she had stayed for the dance. “Are you angry? Have I been keeping you awake?” “I thought you would have been home an hour ago.” “I know. I want to tell you about it. Mama, how lovely you look in that blue thing! Won’t you come up-stairs with me while I undress?” Adelaide shook her head. “Not to-night,” she answered. “You are angry with me,” the girl went on. “But if you will come, I will explain. I have something to tell you, Mama.” Mrs. Farron’s heart stood still. The phrase could mean only one thing. She went up-stairs with her daughter, sent the maid away, and herself began to undo the soft, pink silk. “It needs an extra hook,” she murmured. “I told her it did.” Mathilde craned her neck over her shoulder, as if she had ever been able to see the middle of her back. “But it doesn’t show, does it?” she asked. “It perfectly well might.” Mathilde stepped out of her dress, and flung it over a chair. In her short petticoat, with her ankles showing and her arms bare, she looked like a very young girl, and when she put up her hands and took the pins out of her hair, so that it fell over her shoulders, she might have been a child.