Mrs. Tracy's forgiveness turned out harder to win than they had imagined. When they came on her that evening clearing away her lonely supper, as Laura Lou had predicted, their arrival provoked a burst of tears and an embrace in which Vance managed to get included. But the rousing of Mrs. Tracy's emotions did not affect her judgment. The exchange of acrimonious letters between Paul's Landing and Euphoria, at the time when she had ordered Vance out of her house, had sown ineradicable seeds. Even had her son-in-law's prospects impressed her as much as he had hoped, her view would not have changed; but, as Vance soon perceived, she remained unimpressed by the documents so proudly spread before her. "I guess newspaper work's more reliable than magazines," she merely remarked, no doubt mindful of the dizzy heights to which journalism had lifted Bunty Hayes.

But these were secondary considerations; for she now regarded Vance as the corrupter of both her children. Vance had taken Upton to a "bad house" (so Upton, the sneak, had never shouldered his part of the blame!); Vance had made Laura Lou deceive her mother and break her promise to Bunty Hayes, the promise on the strength of which Mrs. Tracy had accepted a loan that it might take years to repay. Vance had wounded her in her pride and her affection; and the double humiliation was not effaced by this vague talk about a review that was going to give him a hundred dollars a piece for articles he hadn't even written.

"Mr. Hayes wanted she should be brought up like a lady, as her father's daughter ought to be," Mrs. Tracy said over and over again, during her first private talk with Vance, on the day after their return to Paul's Landing.

"She doesn't have to be in Hayes's pay to learn to be a lady—I guess God made her that," Vance retorted. Mrs. Tracy, with a cold patience, said he knew well enough what she meant—she meant, educated like a lady, the way all the Lorburns had been; the way she couldn't afford to educate her children because of her husband's misfortunes, and his dying just when things were going against them… . Mr. Hayes had understood, and had wanted to help them, and had acted as a gentleman would… .

"Well, I guess you can trust me to act as well as he did," Vance said, too happy not to be generous, and feeling how poor a case he could make out for his own behaviour. But Mrs. Tracy only answered that, whatever she might feel about the matter, Laura Lou was not free to break her engagement till that thousand dollars was paid back.

"Why, see here, there's been a law in the United States for some years now against trading in flesh and blood," Vance broke out, his irritation rising again; but the resentment in Mrs. Tracy's eyes showed him the uselessness of irony.