“Something on the little mind, isn’t there?” he inquired. “Tell papa and you’ll feel better.”

“There’s nothing on my mind,” I said furiously. “This is the way I play golf, and you can take it or leave it alone.”

I did better after that, out of sheer fury; but all in all it was a bad afternoon. The only comfort I had—and it was not much—was that Audrey Morgan, looking sulky, was on the club veranda when we went there after the game. Tony was extremely nonchalant.

“What, no tennis?” he asked her, smiling.

“It’s too hot for tennis,” she said coldly.

Larry Hamilton was with her, but there was not much further conversation. It was evident that she was not far from tears, and I guessed that Tony had broken an engagement with her to play with me. It ended with Tony asking her to the club dinner-dance that night, and I went home rather put back in my place.

I was relieved, however, when we arrived, to find that our ruse had apparently been successful. Reynolds reported a half dozen callers to inquire for our invalid, eight boxes of flowers, and a telegram to Maud which Tony opened and promptly confiscated, scowling as he did so. But evidently Mr. Elliott had entered and gone without the knowledge of the staff, so I went up and took a shower and dressed for dinner.

Though the heavens fell, the ritual of the huge house had to be carried on, and I think it was that night that it—the house—began to depress me. Up to that week either Maud or Tony had dined with me. Usually when alone we used a small breakfast room rather than the enormous ghostly dining room, its walls hung with tapestries and the candles making only small oases of light on the table and here and there on the walls. I ate my dinner alone, but even the breakfast room, gay with its tiled floor, its hothouse fruit and flowers, failed to cheer me. I would gladly have exchanged the elaborate service, with Reynolds directing the footmen from somewhere behind my chair, for Miss Mattie’s dining room, with its glaring chandelier overhead and Miss Mattie’s Sarah telling me to stir up the gravy so I could get the giblets.

And after dinner it was no better. The lights in the court were out, making it only a black hole, so that the French doors became mirrors reflecting only myself in my thin white dress. The service wing was carefully cut off. I knew there was light and noise there. The staff had its own large servants’ hall, with an upright piano and a billiard table. But it seemed miles away that night.

I had a moment of hope when Tony came down the staircase whistling, on the way to Audrey and the club; but I had only a few words with him when, in white dinner clothes, he stopped in the doorway. “What’s the matter with Mother?” he asked worriedly. “She looks feverish.”