“I think perhaps you know,” I said, as gently as I could. “I’ve seen Miss Connor.”

“Miss Connor?” she repeated. Then I heard her gasp. She sat down suddenly and was still for some time, not speaking, hardly breathing. When she did speak it was in a half whisper.

“Old Connor!” she said. “I’d forgotten all about her. What am I to do, Pat? What am I to do?”

“I don’t think she’ll talk, Margery.”

“She talked to you.”

“Not the way you think. She hasn’t the remotest idea who you are. But she remembers Marguerite Weston. She seems to have been fond of you.”

She was relieved. “Dear old Connor,” she said. “She was good to me. She tried to hold me back, but I was young and headstrong. And you know what Don was. I’m not ashamed, Pat. He did marry me, you know. I divorced him later, after he left me.”

I can still see her, sitting there by the pool, smoking one of my cigarettes and going back over the past as if it relieved her to talk about it. It was the usual story. For a while she had been happy. Then one day Don went away and did not come back. That was in Paris. He had had some money but had spent it lavishly. When he disappeared she was frantic. She spoke no French, and she had the equivalent of twenty dollars in her purse and a hotel bill to pay. Finally she got work as a stenographer with the American Express Company, and one day Julian Stoddard came in. She had worked in his office once for a short time, and he recognized her.

“I told him the story, and he was very kind,” she said. “He advanced me money to pay the hotel and get back to New York, and later on he got me a position there. I saw him pretty often, and—well, you know the rest.”

There was more to it, of course. She had been afraid to come back. But Beverly was ten miles from the city, and for years she had only rarely gone to town. She had changed too. Her hair had turned white, for one thing. She began to feel safe again. And then Don Morgan had come back. It had been pretty desperate, both for Julian and for herself.

“We didn’t know what to do,” she said. “I was almost frantic. But when we learned that he was not staying long. He was sick too. It all seemed safe enough.”

They had talked it over. At first Julian had wanted to take her away, but one of the little girls was not well. And everything had been all right apparently. Don was shut away in the village, and she stayed at the Farm and did not leave the Hill. Then came the awful time when Bessie came over one night with a topcoat over her pajamas and told her she knew her story.

“I was stunned,” she said. “She knew it all. She’d known Don in Paris, and he had told her. I couldn’t go to Julian. I didn’t dare to. I paid her all I could, but it never was enough. She was always coming back for more. That day you saw us on the footpath was only one time. There were plenty of others.”