But you must see that to us it is the inevitable thing to do." "If every one else agreed, I should oppose it." "O Grandfather!" wailed Mathilde.

"And you were our great hope--you and Mrs.Wayne!" "In a matter like this I shall stand by your mother, Mathilde," he said, and Mathilde imagined he meant as opposed to herself.

But he was making an even greater renunciation.
Adelaide was surprised and not pleased when Mathilde came home late for lunch, bringing the Wayne boy with her.

It was not that she had expected her one little phrase about Wayne's hands to change her daughter's love into repugnance,--that sentence had been only the first drop in a distillation that would do its poisonous work gradually,--but she had supposed that Mathilde would be too sensitive to expose Pete to further criticism.

Indeed, there seemed something obtuse, if not actually indelicate, in being willing to create a situation in which every one was bound to suffer.