“It isn’t serious, is it?”

“She’s not seeing anyone. Anyhow, she’s asleep now. I can’t bother her.” She hung up the receiver, leaving me with a wild desire to smack her lovely face.

After that I called Jim Conway and told him of the day’s results. He seemed satisfied. “Atta girl,” he said. “You’ll have her eating out of your hand in a day or two.”

“Eating a piece out of it, I expect. She has a pretty good set of uppers and lowers.”

I was restless that day. My desk was piled high with work. The cards of thanks for flowers and so on had come in. There were notes to write, even the house to look after. When Bill Sterling came in late in the afternoon to see Mrs. Partridge I waylaid him in the hall.

“What’s the matter with Lydia?” I asked.

He seemed tired. He put his black bag on a chair and stood looking down at me. “I wish I knew,” he said candidly. “Maybe it’s reaction. She’s been through a lot. Maybe it’s something else. I wish you’d talk to her, Pat.”

“Audrey says she won’t see anybody.”

“Oh, damn Audrey,” he said, and picked up his bag again.

He was not greatly concerned, however. I saw him out to his car where the little detective sat at the wheel. Bill laughed at my expression when I saw him. “Makes a pretty good chauffeur,” he said. “He’s learning some surgery too.”

The little man grinned sheepishly.

I drove down to Miss Mattie’s late that afternoon. She was pleased when I told her that I would be coming back soon.

“I never did like your being up there,” she said in her thin high voice. “The idea of calling a house the Cloisters! It’s almost sacrilegious.”

It was all familiar and friendly. Even the odor of soap when Sarah offered me a moist red hand was vaguely comforting, and when I went up to my old room I had a feeling of coming home. It was not large, the room, but I had furnished it with some of the things from our old house before it was sold. It looked cheerful and peaceful, and I remember sitting down in what had been Mother’s favorite chair, and trying to reorient myself.

All at once violence and sudden death seemed far away. A boat whistled on the river, there was the slow rumble of a freight train sliding down the grade, and all about me were the familiar streets and houses of the valley.

This was where I belonged. The five-fifteen coming in, men spilling out of it, the evening papers under their arms, car doors slamming, and somewhere lighted windows and a welcome. “Is that you, John?” “Sure. How’s everything?”

I belonged there in Beverly. I wanted peace and orderly living. Not money. Not grandeur. Not the Hill. Not even love.

I put my head down on the bed and cried my eyes out.

The next few days kept me busy. Bessie had not come back. Tony was busy too, not only with the mills but with the preliminaries of settling his mother’s estate. At night I worked over my desk. The days I spent on Miss Connor.