“I’ll wait for Evans,” she said. “I don’t want any strange man wandering around the house at night.”

I was busy once more. It was amazing the number of invitations to be answered, notes of thanks to be sent, and letters which had accumulated during Maud’s illness. I had called Lydia as soon as I had heard the news, and there was a thrill of happiness in her voice when she replied.

“I suppose I’m being silly,” she said. “There’s nothing definite really, but I’m frightfully happy. Do come down.”

Actually it was the first of September before I saw her, and I noticed at once that there was a change in her. She was sewing in the garden, and I thought she had been crying. I kissed her and told her she was lucky, that I had been crazy about Bill for years. But she still seemed depressed.

“Audrey doesn’t like it,” she said in a low voice. “She has some silly idea about her father. I suppose it’s my fault. I never told her all the truth, and naturally no one else has. She thinks he left me because he couldn’t support us any longer. Now she has idealized him. It makes it awfully hard, Pat.”

“Then tell her,” I said. “It’s time she knew. She’s not a child.”

“It would be a dreadful blow. She’s proud, you know. That awful story, Pat. I just can’t do it. You can’t build up a man to his child for fifteen years and then destroy him. I don’t think she’d even believe me.”

I was indignant. “If you’re going to let Donald Morgan ruin your life all over again I have no patience with you. As for Audrey, she’ll have to know sometime. Anyhow, she’ll marry soon. Then where will you be?”

I think I convinced her, there on that warm early September morning, with the dahlias and asters in full bloom in her garden, and her face turned toward the river and the hills beyond as if she saw hope and happiness there. She looked very young that day, very young and very lovely.

“I suppose you’re right, Pat,” she said. “It won’t be easy, but I have to think of Bill too.”

“You marry Bill Sterling and forget the rest,” I advised her, and left her there with a new look of determination on her face.

All seemed to be well with my particular world that day as I turned my old car up the hill. Maud was improving; not her old self, perhaps, but getting about. Evans was on the way to recovery. No one so far had tried to get into the Cloisters, and I was planning some new clothes for the fall. To complete my contentment, Tony dined at home that night, and with me.

Maud had sent down word that she was tired and would have a tray in bed; so he gravely gave me an arm and escorted me down the long hall.