By chance, a house had become vacant on the side street a few doors down from Sean’s mansion on Fifth Avenue, and Sean had bought it. “I don’t want to rent it out,” he told her, “so you’d be doing me a favor if you’d live in it for me.” Compared with his own place, the house was quite modest, but it was still far bigger than she needed. When his children and grandchildren had begged her to live there, however, she had taken the hint. Apart from her own bedroom, which was very simply furnished with some things she liked, she had let them decorate the house as they wished. Hardly a week went by without one of the younger generation calling in there with friends, to have tea with their Aunt Mary. And she’d entertain them in just the style they would have encountered in the Masters’ house in Gramercy Park. That wasn’t difficult; after all, she’d been watching Hetty do it for forty years. In this way, she was able to complete the picture of the family’s new wealth and respectability to everyone’s satisfaction. She didn’t mind doing so, if it made them happy.

But this evening was different. His Lordship might ask probing questions. Like: What had she been doing for the last forty years of her life?

If the truth were told, when she first came to live in her grand house, she’d rather missed her little room at the Masters’. But then events had brought about a new arrangement.

She’d been in her house a year when Frank Master had fallen sick and died. Hetty Master had only been widowed a couple of months when she asked Mary to call, and told her: “I get a little lonely, Mary. There’s always a room for you here, any time you’d like to stay and keep me company.” And when Mary had proposed spending two or three nights a week in Gramercy Park, Hetty had suggested: “I thought you might like to use the blue bedroom.”

Her old room had been up on the servants’ floor. The blue bedroom was on the same floor as Hetty’s. Mary had accepted. Everyone understood. The servants called her “Miss O’Donnell” now. They knew she was rich.

So Mary divided her time between Fifth Avenue and Gramercy Park, and she was quite happy. Her new regime left her with time on her hands, but she found many agreeable ways to fill it. She liked to draw, and she went to art classes. She and Hetty became frequenters of exhibitions and lectures. Her taste in music remained quite simple, but when the brilliant operettas of Gilbert and Sullivan came from London to New York, she always went. She’d seen The Mikado and The Yeoman of the Guard three or four times.