His son did not misunderstand him; in fact, he understood more clearly
than perhaps did the older man himself. Mr. Adriance had chosen the
hostess he wanted for his house, or rather, he had been enchanted by
Tony's supposed choice. Lucille Masterson filled his ideal of his son's
wife. Her loveliness would be a point of pride; her social experience
would make her competent for the position; moreover, she was too clever
not to have courted and won the genuine liking of Tony's father long
ago. Fred Masterson was hardly considered, except as an obstacle readily
removed, when the proper time came. And now, Tony himself was
overturning all the pleasant family life that Mr. Adriance had planned.
He knew that his father never willingly relinquished a perfected plan;
rarely, indeed, was he turned aside from a purpose on which his mind was
fixed.

"Perhaps you will reconsider that statement later," Mr. Adriance
presently suggested.

"I think not, in the sense you mean," he made slow reply.

Mr. Adriance raised himself abruptly.

"I hope so," he said, with a touch of sharpness; "I hope you are not
going to grow irresolute and changeable, Tony. I detest weakness of
character. Perhaps you had better take a trip somewhere and get yourself
in tone."

"Perhaps," Tony agreed; his voice was not yielding, but sullen and
desperate.

Indeed, he was as near illness as a man may be without physical injury
or disease. After his father had left the breakfast-room he sat for a
long time in utter mental incapacity to undertake any line of effort.
Finally he arose, oppressed with a sense of suffocation in the rich,
sombre atmosphere; of imprisonment and helplessness. He wanted air and
solitude, the solitude he had come to the breakfast-room to escape, and
he could think of no place where he could be so well assured of both as
in his motor-car.

In his abstraction he walked bareheaded and without an overcoat across

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