“And there’s the house, and Mr. Fifield waving.”

“You made it!” Mr. Fifield said, shaking Sally’s hand, then Tim’s. “The road was not built for these grand low-slung beasts. In winter I’m snowed in here once in a while for forty-eight hours. The road agent would like to see me go to Boston in winter—he tries to persuade me it would be good for my health.”

Mr. Fifield, six feet tall, looked down on Sally with a twinkle in his eye. It was the eye of a man who enjoyed a pretty woman and was not ashamed to show his pleasure.

“Come in. Things are not quite as they were when Olive was alive, but Mrs. Goodnow does the best she can, and I’m lucky to have her. I’ll lead the way.”

The Websters followed the tall figure through a front parlor to a much larger study at the back, paneled in soft brown unpainted pine where it was not lined with books to the ceiling. A wood fire burned in the huge fireplace.

“This was the kitchen in the old days, as you can see—they did the cooking in this fireplace in my great-grandmother’s time. Now it’s my study. You’ll just have to pretend you don’t see the mess,” he said, turning a lamp out over his desk, piled high with letters, open boxes, magazines, with a small leather elephant raising his trunk at one end, and with other bibelots. “Do sit down, Mrs. Webster. First we’ll talk and then Mrs. Goodnow will provide drinks. She’s not very good at tea, but I presume you will have no objection to bourbon or scotch when the time comes.—Well, now …”

Eben Fifield turned to Tim, who was sitting beside his wife on a small sofa. Sally had the impression that Olive must have put her feet up on the sofa while her husband read in the wing chair opposite. The house had the aura still of a feminine presence—the presence, no doubt, that looked down on them from a portrait over the mantel, a pretty woman in a white dress, the eyes in shadow, looking out from under a wide summer hat.