“Who could help it? I forgot myself in the delight of seeing that new moon over the crest of that fir in the silver bush and I pointed it out to May. ‘How cute!’ remarks my sister-in-law. And that creature is…by law…a Gardiner of Silver Bush!”

“Still, the new moon over the fir tree is just as exquisite as it ever was,” said Rae softly.

But Pat would listen just then to no comforting.

“Think of dinner. At the best now we never have any real conversation at our meals…and at the worst it is like it was today. Rae, at times it simply seems to me that everything sane and sweet and happy has vanished from Silver Bush and only returns for a little while when she is away. Why, she listens on the ’phone…fancy any one at Silver Bush listening on the phone!…and gossips over what she hears. I feel dragged in the dust when I hear her. Do you know that she took that gang of her Summerside cousins into our room yesterday…our room!…and showed it to them?”

“Well, she wouldn’t find it littered with hair-pins and face powder as hers is,” said Rae, looking fondly around at their little immaculate room, engoldened by the light of the new corn-colored curtains she and Pat had selected that spring. Here, at least, were yet stillness and peace and refreshment whatever might be the state of things elsewhere. “And as for her setting Sid against us, she can’t do that, Pat. Sid knows what she is now. And dad will remain master of Silver Bush. Let’s just sit tight and wait. Here’s a letter from Hilary I’ve just brought in from the box. It will cheer you up.”

But it hardly did, though Pat wistfully read it over three times in the hope of finding that elusive something Hilary’s letters used to possess. It was nice, like all Hilary’s letters. But it was the first for quite a long time…and it was a little remote, somehow…as if he were thinking of something else all the time he was writing it. He was going to Italy and then to the east…Egypt…India…to study architecture. He would be away for a year.