The crowd had thinned considerably when I went down. In the vestibule, I heard a woman remark, “I wouldn’t mind if my income were cut to fifteen thousand. I’d just go out to my farm for the whole year.” And another voice replied, “Of course it wouldn’t go hard with you, Augusta. Why, you have a fortune in your roses if you’d only do something about it.” Augusta, whom I immediately knew to be the aunt Philip had visited when he drove me to Wolfburg from Chichester, laughed heartily. “That’s what my nephew tells me, but he’s a pipe-dreamer. I’m so glad that at least one of his pipe-dreams has come true. Hope is the sweetest girl in Boston, I’ve always felt.”

“Wasn’t it strange,” said the Countess to Miss Pride, “that Mrs. Hornblower brought her present with her?”

“I didn’t know she did,” said Miss Pride. “It was peculiar enough of her to come in an evening dress.”

“That’s not all. She unwrapped it herself as well, and what do you suppose it was? A dozen perfectly horrid souvenir coffee spoons.”

“My dear!”

Hopestill was coming down the stairs and in her carefully composed face there was no sign of the fright and anger that had made her burst out to me in her room. She joined Philip at the door and they went out, sped on by the uproar of the guests who had lingered.

“At any rate,” Miss Pride was saying at my elbow, “I haven’t lost this one,” and she slipped her arm through mine. Through the sleeve of her black suit, I felt her bone on my flesh like a steel wand or, as she bent it into a hook, like a thin, inflexible staple. “And now,” she went on to the Admiral, “now I’m going back to my memoirs.”

The Admiral smiled radiantly. “When is this celebrated volume to be finished?”

Miss Pride returned his smile. “I dare say it will be years. At least that’s what I intend, for I want something to occupy me so that I won’t get foolish, and to occupy Sonie so she won’t forsake me. Am I selfish?”

“No, ma’am. You’re the most generous woman in Boston.” He bowed deeply and then said to me, “And you, Mademoiselle, are the luckiest.”