“That is quite a handsome jersey,” I remarked at last. He looked down at his white vest, a bright crimson H emblazoned across the front.

“Ah,” he said, now feigning solemnity, “my scarlet letter. I wear this mark of shame and travel round the world to draw forth from hiding the infernal brotherhood.”

I snorted. “A very Ethan Brand.”

“Do not mock, Miss Thomas.” He drew closer. “The method works! I cannot go anywhere without another one pops forward to shake my hand, speaking of fair Harvard.” He paused. “On the other hand,” he whispered to me conspiratorially, slipping the cigar back between his lips, “I also wear it for Mater. She thinks I am best situated with an H upon my breast.”

I smiled. He grinned and bowed. “Welcome back, Miss Thomas,” he then said softly, and walked from the room.

I stood unmoving for a long moment. Bart Hunnowell! I began to dismiss him reflexively. Only just see how the hero of the morning had slipped to patter—to become a cheerful spy upon the silly talk of girls! He was … I paused before the image of the two of us standing silently together. He was … perplexing. For there remained in him a deep, abiding quiet, a watchfulness. And when he had turned that quiet upon me, I could not rest there. I’d had to speak—or look away. The clock in the front hall chimed six. Stuff! I would go upstairs and read, I decided. It lacked only an hour until the dressing bell sounded.

As I issued from the sitting room, I chanced to hear Ruth’s voice twittering away still from one of the piazza swings. I could not make out what she chattered on about, and I turned toward the stairs, until my gait was arrested by the sound of my own name rising to me from the mud of her conversation. I paused in my step. And then quite clearly, I heard, “Maisie Thomas?”

“Yes, I think so.”

“But he is famously undependable.”

“Nevertheless, I think they would make quite a good match.”

“stuff!” I said aloud to the empty hallway, and quickly ran up the stairs to the head of the passageway. A breeze stirred the white curtains in the windows at the end of the passage. Before me was all light and color, and the hush of shut rooms. No one was about. I stopped, my hand upon the newel post, suddenly unable to take a step farther into that silence, as though I had stumbled upon the fold between the earthly and the heavenly world, and the House around me bore mute witness. Who was I, standing there? The quiet passageway regarded me.