"You are so modest! Well, your understanding helpfulness."
"Very well--good business! and that brings me to my point. I have always said that if I must trust myself, my confidence, or my money to anyone, I would choose a person who, by training, instincts, and possibilities most nearly was akin to myself. I sincerely believe inheritance and blood do count. Now just suppose----" Mrs. Treadwell gingerly put her weight on the next footing; "suppose you were obliged to intrust your wealth and future interests to one of two men, would you not feel safer in the hands of the man who, for family reasons and by inherited tastes, could understand you and your ideals?"
"You know when a test comes you have to take a good deal for granted in one who has no tie of blood to hold him to you?"
"May I request, madam, that you tell me exactly what you mean in as few words as possible? I see that you are embarrassed by what you have been kind enough to come to tell me--I believe it will help us both if you state your facts without further explanation or preparation."
The tide had carried Olive Treadwell out into midstream--it was sink or swim now!
"I will do so. I cannot bear to see you duped by your adopted--shall I say, son?"
"I have never held the position of father to young Morley. I've helped him to find himself as I have many another young man. He has no reason to dupe me. We understand each other fairly well; better, I think than most old men and young ones."
"Very well, then listen. Remember I would not have come to you if I had not had evidence. You take exception to Lans and his ways of life, I have been informed that you have even called him a--a--libertine!"
"I do not ask, Mr. Markham, that you try to withhold your judgments until you know all the facts about my boy. You were never fair to him; you saw him--you see him now--through his father, my poor brother!"
"Madam, for his mother's sake I have always kept in touch with his career even when I knew he was beyond any caution or judgment of mine. I know that he has shamefully compromised a young woman and quite openly flaunts his relations with her by calling them some new-fangled name. Perhaps I am a narrow-gauge man, madam. All my life I have been obliged to travel from a certain point to a certain point--I'm made that way. I have endeavoured to look about to help my fellow-men, when I could in justice do so, but I have stuck to the tracks that seem to me to lead safely through the land of my journey. I am not interested in branch roads or sidings."