She never mentioned Bessie or the quarrel I had overheard on the path; but sometimes I saw her watching me, as though she wondered what I made of it. When they met, which was seldom, they were coldly civil. But more than once I saw her follow Bessie with her eyes, and was puzzled by what I saw in them.

One day Maud told her that she might give up the Cloisters. We were in the court, for there was a brisk wind blowing, and Maud, I remember, was knitting. She threw her bomb quietly. “It’s too big, and anyhow the day of such houses is over. It would make a good orphanage, wouldn’t it? All the room for children to run in, and this court for the sick ones to get the sun.”

Margery looked incredulous. “You can’t mean it,” she said. “You’re not serious, are you?”

“Of course I’m serious.”

“But Tony! He loves it, Maud.”

“Tony will understand,” she said gravely, and changed the subject.

She had made her decision by that time, although we did not know it. How could we? But all those weeks upstairs she had been thinking about it. Now she was ready.

Not at once. She gave herself a few days first. She needed her strength. Also she had plans to make. Outwardly she was perfectly normal. She even had some people in to tea that week; a tea which was mostly cocktails, but which brought her old friends around her. She was at her best that day, handsome, smiling, even gay. Dwight Elliott stayed mostly at her elbow, and I wondered again if she would ever marry him.

At her request I poured. Bessie was not in sight, and even Tony seemed his old debonair self. There had been death and mystery, but it seemed far away with that crowd of complacent men and women.

Then Bessie appeared. I saw Tony’s face tighten and Margery Stoddard’s laugh die on her lips. Bessie, however, was unconcerned. She made her way to the tea table and stood over me. “Thanks a lot, Pat,” she said. “I’ll take over now. Sorry I’m late.”

I got up, and she took my place. It was a mistake, of course. They did not like her, that hard-riding, straight-thinking crowd. They moved away from the tea table, and soon after the party broke up.

It did not seem important at the time, that small bit of self-assertion and its result. But it was. In a way it precipitated our tragedy, perhaps even caused it. For two days later Bessie herself had a party. She was planning to go away, to the relief of everyone in the house, and this she said was her good-by.

She had about thirty people, mostly young and all noisy. The trouble started when she called Reynolds and told him a dozen of them were staying for dinner.

He ventured to expostulate. “I’m sorry, madam, I don’t think there is sufficient food in the house.”