“It really is a success, isn’t it, Pat?” she said. “That Morgan child is a lovely creature. If I were a man I’d fall for her myself. Tony seems to like her.” She sighed and looked thoughtful. “Do you mind going down to the playhouse? I don’t want anybody to decide to take a swim in his dress clothes.”

As it turned out, I was just in time. I found one youth from the city who had suddenly considered it a good idea, and was poised on the springboard over the pool, tailcoat and all, when I got there. But I had a puzzling experience myself on the way.

The route to the playhouse is a sort of dogleg. The building lies behind the main house and two hundred yards away in a direct line. To get there one goes straight along a sort of green alley of lawn between trees to a fountain at the end, and then turns to the right around a planting of shrubbery. The playhouse is only a few yards away.

The fountain of white marble was floodlighted that night from the trees above it, and the playhouse was ablaze with lights and shrill with laughter and music. Outside of it a man was standing, peering in.

He was not in evening clothes and at first I thought he was a reporter, or perhaps a cameraman trying to get a picture. As we had guards at the gate to keep out all interlopers, I was surprised, to say the least.

He seemed to be watching something inside; watching intently, his hands on a window sill, his body tense. As I was on the grass he did not hear me until I was fairly close. Then he did a surprising thing. He turned and ran, and for some time I could hear him crashing through the underbrush in the direction of the country club golf course, which adjoins the Cloisters property. I was astonished, but not worried; and as I have said, I had my hands full after that, what with the diving youth and one of the waiters from the city who had crawled into a guest-room bed and was peacefully sleeping, an empty bottle beside him. So I did not tell Maud about our visitor, either then or later. Perhaps I should have. Still, what good would it have done? She would have known no more than I did.

It was the next day that she asked me to give up my room at Miss Mattie’s and stay at the Cloisters. She looked as fresh as though she had slept an entire night, although she had gone to bed at six in the morning after an alfresco breakfast to everybody of scrambled eggs and sausages.

“I’d like it,” she said. “Tony’s in town all day and out a good many evenings, and unless I give a party or go to one I’m alone too much. I used to turn on the organ, but an organ’s a melancholy substitute for the human voice.”