There is surely nothing compromising in an elderly gentleman spending a contemplative morning alone at the Metropolitan Museum. It might well be his daily custom; but the knowledge that it was not, the consciousness of the rarity of the mood that had brought him there, oppressed Mr. Lanley almost like a crime. He felt caught, outraged, ashamed as he saw them. "That's the age which has a right to it," he said to himself. And then as if in a mirror he saw an expression of embarrassment on their faces, and was reminded that their meeting must have been illicit, too. He stood up and looked at them sternly.
"Grandfather, I never knew you came here much," said Mathilde.
"It's near me, you know," he answered weakly, so weakly that he felt impelled to give an explanation. "Sometimes, my dear," he said, "you will find that even the most welcome guest rather fills the house."
"You need not worry about yours," returned Mathilde. "I left her with Mama."
Mr. Lanley felt that his brief moment of peace was indeed over. He could imagine the impressions that Mrs. Baxter was perhaps at that very moment sharing with Adelaide. He longed to question his granddaughter, but did not know how to put it.
"How was your mother looking?" he finally decided upon.
"Dreary," answered Mathilde, with a laugh.
"Does this picture remind you of any one?" asked Wayne, suddenly.
Mr. Lanley looked at him as if he hadn't heard, and frowned.
"Don't you think there's a look of my mother about it?"
"No," said Mr. Lanley, rather loudly, and then added, "Well, I see what you mean, though I shouldn't--" He stopped and turning to them with some sternness, he asked them how they accounted for their presence in the museum at such an hour and alone.
There was nothing to do but to tell him the truth. And when Wayne had finished, Mathilde was surprised at her grandfather's question. She thought he would ask what her mother thought of it. If they had been alone, she would have told him that Adelaide thought Wayne a commonplace young man with stubby hands; but as it was, she had resolved to put her mother's opposition on a more dignified plane. Only Mr. Lanley did not ask the question of her. It was to Wayne he was speaking, when he said: