A little later he and his sister were at luncheon in her dining-room.
"I am losing patience with you, Dick," she said, as she poured his tea.
"Is that anything new?" he ventured to jest, while wondering what might lay in the little woman's mind.
"You are too strenuous," she smiled, as she dropped two lumps of sugar into his cup. "Entirely too much so. I saw from your face this morning that you are already undoing the effects of your vacation. The old glare is back in your eyes; your hands shake. I really must warn you. You know our father died from softening of the brain, which was brought on by financial worry. You are killing yourself, and for no reason in the world. Look at Alan Delbridge. He is the ideal man of affairs. Nothing disturbs him."
"It is always Delbridge, Delbridge!" Mostyn said, testily. "Even you can't keep from hurling him in my teeth. He is as cold-blooded as a fish. Why should I want to be like him?"
"Well, take Jarvis Saunders, then," she returned. "What more success could a man want than he gets? I like to talk to him. He has a helpful philosophy of life. When he leaves his desk he is as happy and free as a boy out of school. I saw him pitching and catching ball in a vacant lot with one of your clerks the other day. Is it any wonder that so many mothers of unmarried daughters consider him a safe catch for their girls? I am not punning; he really is wonderful."
"Oh, I know it," Mostyn answered, drinking his tea, impatiently. "I was not made like him. I am not to blame."
Mrs. Moore eyed him silently for a moment, then a serious expression settled on her florid face. "Well," she ejaculated, "when are you going to make a real clean breast of it?"
A shudder passed through him. She knew what had brought him home. Marie's hysterical protest had leaked out. The girl had talked to others besides Saunders.
"What do you mean?" He asked the question quite aimlessly. He avoided her eyes.
"I want to know about your latest love affair," she laughed, softly. "Just one line in your last letter meant more to me than all the rest of it put together. As soon as I heard you were staying at Drake's I began to expect it. So I was not surprised. You see, I saw her a year ago. Jarvis introduced us one day. He put himself out to do it. According to him, she was wonderful, a genius, and what not."