b Grant, are they?
And he sent you here asking me for mercy!"

Kenyon shook his head in protest and cried: "No, no, no. He doesn't even
know--"

She looked at the young man and became convinced that he was telling the
truth; but she was sure that Laura Van Dorn had sent him. It was her
habit of mind to see the ulterior motive. So the passion of motherhood
flaring up after years of suppression quickly died down. It could not
dominate her in her late forties, even for the time, nor even with the
power which held her during the night of the riot in South Harvey, when
she was in her thirties. The passion of motherhood with Margaret Van
Dorn was largely a memory, but hate was a lively and material emotion.

She fondled her son in the simulation of a passion that she did not
feel--and when in his eagerness he tried vainly to tie her to a promise
to help his father, she would only reply:

"Kenyon, oh, my son, my beautiful son--you know I'd give my life for
you--"

The son looked into the dead, brassy eyes of his mother, saw her
drooping mouth, with the brown lips that had not been stained that day;
observed the slumping muscles of her over-massaged face, and felt with a
shudder the caress of her fingers--and he knew in his heart that she was
deceiving him. A moment after she had spoken the automobile going to the
station for the Judge backed out of the garage and turned into the
street.

"You must go now," she cried, clinging to him. "Oh, son--son--my only
son--come to me, come to your mother sometimes for her love. He is
coming now in a few minutes on the eight o'clock train. You must not let
him see you here."

She helped Kenyon to rise. He stumbled across the floor to the steps and
she helped him gently down to the lawn. She stood play-acting for him a
moment in whisper and pantomime, then she turned and hurried indoors and
met the inquisitive maid servant with:

"Just that Kenyon Adams--the musician--awfully dear boy, but he wanted
me to interfere with the Judge for that worthless brother, Grant. The
Nesbits sent him. You know the Nesbit woman is crazy about that
anarchist. Oh, Nadine, did Chalmers see Kenyon? You know Chalmers just
blabs everything to the Judge."

Nadine indicated that Chalmers had recognized Kenyon as he crawled up
the veranda steps and Mrs. Van Dorn replied: "Very well, I'll be ready
for him." And half an hour later, when the Judge drove up, his wife met
him as he was putting his valise in h