“So witty, so amiable, and, for a leader at the bar, he has an extraordinarily light touch.” Mr. Lanley had resumed his position on the hearth-rug and his contemplation of the ceiling. “Wilsey’s not a leader at the bar,” he said, with open crossness. He showed no disposition to sit and chat over the events of the evening. CHAPTER XI Early the next morning, in Mrs. Baxter’s parlance,--that is to say, some little time before the sun had reached the meridian,--she was ringing Adelaide’s door-bell, while she minutely observed the curtains, the door-mat, the ivy plants in the vestibule, and the brightness of the brass knobs on the railing. In this she had a double motive: what was evil she would criticize, what was good she would copy. Adelaide was sitting with her husband when her visitor’s name was brought up. Since she had discovered that she was to be nothing but a sort of super-nurse to him, she found herself expert at rendering such service. She had brought in his favorite flowers, chosen a book for his bedside, and now sat gossiping beside him, not bringing him, as she said to herself, any of her real troubles; that would not be good for him. How extraordinarily easy it was to conceal, she thought. She heard her own tones, as gay and intimate as ever, as satisfactory to Vincent; and yet all the time her mind was working apart on her anxieties about Mathilde--anxieties with which, of course, one couldn’t bother a poor sick creature. She smoothed his pillow with the utmost tenderness. “Oh, Pringle,” she said, in answer to his announcement that Mrs. Baxter was down-stairs, “you haven’t let her in?” “She’s in the drawing-room, Madam.” And Pringle added as a clear indication of what he considered her duty, “She came in Mr. Lanley’s motor.” “Of course she did. Well, say I’ll be down,” and as Pringle went away with this encouraging intelligence, Adelaide sank even farther back in her chair and looked at her husband. “What I am called upon to sacrifice to other people’s love affairs! The Waynes and Mrs. Baxter--I never have time for my own friends. I don’t mind Mrs. Baxter when you’re well, and I can have a dinner; I ask all the stupid people together to whom I owe parties, and she is so pleased with them, and thinks they represent the most brilliant New York circle; but to have to go down and actually talk to her, isn’t that hard, Vin?” “Hard on me,” said Farron. “Oh, I shall come back--exhausted.” “By what you have given out?”