“In two weeks?” And this time she could not prevent her eye lighting a little. She thought how nicely that small complication had settled itself, and how clever she had been to have the mother to dinner and behave as if she were friendly. She did not notice that her daughter was trembling; she couldn’t, of course, be expected to know that the girl’s hands were like ice, and that she had waited several seconds to steady her voice sufficiently to pronounce the fatal sentence: “He wants me to go with him, Mama.” She watched her mother in an agony for the effect of these words. Mrs. Farron had suddenly detected a new burn in the hearth-rug. She bent over it. “This wood does snap so!” she murmured. The rug was a beautiful old Persian carpet of roses and urns. “Did you understand what I said, Mama?” “Yes, dear; that Mr. Wayne was going to China in two weeks and wanted you to go, too. Was it just a _politesse_, or does he actually imagine that you could?” “He thinks I can.” Mrs. Farron laughed good-temperedly. “Did you go and see about having your pink silk shortened?” she said. Mathilde stared at her mother, and in the momentary silence Lucie came in and asked what madame wanted for the evening, and Adelaide in her fluent French began explaining that what she really desired most was that Lucie should not make so much noise in her room that monsieur could not sleep. In the midst of it she stopped and turned to her daughter. “Won’t you be late for dinner, darling?” she said. Mathilde thought it very possible, and went away to get dressed. She went into her own room and shut the door sharply behind her. All the time she was dressing she tried to rehearse her case--that it was her life, her love, her chance; but all the time she had a sickening sense that a lifted eye-brow of her mother’s would make it sound childish and absurd even in her own ears. She had counted on a long evening, but when she went down-stairs she found three or four friends of her mother’s were to dine and go to the theater. The dinner was amusing, the talk, though avowedly hampered by the presence of Mathilde, was witty and unexpected enough; but Mathilde was not amused by it, for she particularly dreaded her mother in such a mood of ruthless gaiety. At the theater they were extremely critical, and though they missed almost the whole first act, appeared, in the entr’acte, to feel no hesitation in condemning it. They spoke of French and Italian actors by name, laughed heartily over the playwright’s conception of social usages, and made Mathilde feel as if her own unacknowledged enjoyment of the play was the guiltiest of secrets. As they drove home, she was again alone with her mother, and she said at once the sentence she had determined on: “I don’t think you understood, Mama, how seriously I meant what I said this afternoon.”