Still, she proposed to see what
a conversation with Eugene would do.

The next morning as he was sitting in his office wondering what the
delay of five days portended, and what Suzanne was doing, as well as
trying to fix his mind on the multitudinous details which required his
constant attention, and were now being rather markedly neglected, the
card of Mrs. Emily Dale was laid on his table, and a few moments later,
after his secretary had been dismissed, and word given that no one else
was to be allowed to enter, Mrs. Dale was shown in.

She was pale and weary, but exquisitely dressed in a greenish blue silk
and picture hat of black straw and feathers. She looked quite young and
handsome herself, not too old for Eugene, and indeed once she had
fancied he might well fall in love with her. What her thoughts were at
that time, she was not now willing to recall, for they had involved the
probable desertion or divorce, or death of Angela, and Eugene's
passionate infatuation for her. All that was over now, of course, and in
the excitement and distress, almost completely obliterated. Eugene had
not forgotten that he had had similar sensations or imaginations at the
time, and that Mrs. Dale had always drawn to him in a sympathetic and
friendly way. Here she was, though, this morning coming upon a desperate
mission no doubt, and he would have to contend with her as best he
could.

The conversation opened by his looking into her set face as she
approached and smiling blandly, though it was something of an effort.
"Well," he said, in quite a business like way, "what can I do for you?"

"You villain," she exclaimed melodramatically, "my daughter has told me
all."

"Yes, Suzanne phoned me that she told you," he replied, in a
conciliatory tone.

"Yes," she said in a low, tense voice, "and I ought to kill you where
you stand. To think that I should have ever harbored such a monster as
you in my home and near my dear, innocent daughter. It seems incredible
now. I can't believe it. That you should dare. And you with a dear,
sweet wife at home, sick and in the condition she is in. I should think
if you had any manhood at all any sense of shame! When I think of that
poor, dear little woman, and what you have been doing, or trying to
do--if it weren't for the scandal you would never leave this office
alive."

"Oh, bother! Don't talk rot, Mrs. Dale," said Eugene quietly, though
irritably. He did not care for her melodramatic atti