I feel I can count on Dickie absolutely, said Marian. Then some uncertainty passed over her face. As long as I don’t bother him too much.

Cap has the ability to become absolutely stone deaf if he doesn’t want to hear what I’m saying, said Sis Sedgwick, wobbling against the sideboard. It wasn’t the most promising characteristic for a man who was serving his second term as a Republican congressman, a man who by all accounts was destined for a bright political career.

Jane Ives stirred her tea. I’ve always quite liked men, she said.

While the cake was being cut in the dining room, Lilian approached Madelaine Wigglesworth. I’m sorry, she said. Do you know what’s become of Walter Vail? I haven’t seen him since … Her voice trailed off.

You know, said Madelaine Wigglesworth, and her mask seemed to fall and Lilian saw for the first time concern on her face and something bright in her eye. The last I heard of him he was living in London. He’s had some bad luck, you know — Lilian nodded, not knowing all of it — but has landed on his feet. He’s still doing preservation work over there. But I worry about Walter. Never satisfied with where he is. She shook her head. I imagine it would be terrible to always be so dissatisfied.

Yes, Lilian said, it would.

Madelaine Wigglesworth drifted off. Lilian saw her talking to Elsie McDonnell, and already Madelaine looked lofty and cold again. Lilian wondered at her having been a friend of Walter Vail’s, without understanding him, while she, who had a boundless appreciation, had been excluded from his friendship.

She felt a tugging on her skirt and looked down to see Sally’s mournful face. I loss my shoe, she said.

That I can take care of, said Lilian, and they went off in search of it.

43 • A gulf between them

43 • A gulf between them

IT SOMETIMES occurred to Lilian when she was among the children or her lady friends how far off Gilbert’s life was from her own. Funny, while he had been sick she felt that they had been somehow closer, the stuff of her days mixed in with the stuff of his. Yet now, despite living in the same house and eating dinners together, something they didn’t do while he was at the clinic, their concerns seemed hardly to overlap. Of course they had the children in common, but increasingly that was Lilian’s dominion and she merely informed Gilbert of its goings-on.