“I’ve held rotten cards,” she said. Then she laughed. “Maybe I’m lucky in love,” she added, and looked at Tony.

But Tony had had enough. He slammed out of the house, and we did not see him again.

Maud and I went up to bed early. I saw that the closed suite was opened, which ended one mystery. But I did not sleep much that night. The birds were chirping in a gray dawn before I dozed off. It seemed to me that one phase of my life was over, and another strange unhappy one beginning. I went to sleep wondering whether Maud had seen Bessie in the city the day she had collapsed.

I was wrong, of course. It was not so simple as that, although Bessie was to bring us trouble enough. She lost no time in getting to work, either. At two o’clock in the morning I heard Roger rumbling from where he slept outside my door, and getting up, I opened it cautiously.

The hall lights were on, and Bessie in a tweed coat over pajamas was coming up the stairs.

Chapter Eight

BESSIE’S ARRIVAL CHANGED EVERYTHING for all of us. There were no more quiet days, no more still evenings when we watched the sun go down over the river and talked or were silent as we chose. Not that she was always unpleasant or even arrogant, but she had an air at times of amused triumph that seemed to puzzle Maud and drove me practically frantic.

Tony took to staying away as much as possible. Maud was uncertain and unhappy. Even the servants looked somber. The house, always overwhelming, became an actual weight of gloom. And on the third day after her arrival Bessie sent Nora to ask me to go to her sitting room.

I had never been inside that suite of hers, and it made me gasp. I may have failed to do justice to the Cloisters. It was bad in some ways, but it was filled with beautiful things. Bessie’s rooms, furnished by her after her marriage, were almost a shocking contrast. They were a mass of glass and chromium and strong colors, and I found myself blinking in the morning sunlight.

She was sitting at a desk with a lot of papers in front of her. She had not dressed, but from the odor of bath salts and powder I suppose she had already bathed. Without her make-up she was not pretty, and her voice was petulant when she saw me.

“Hello, Miss Abbott,” she said. “I wish you’d give me a hand with these. God knows where all the bills come from. I don’t.”

I had a wild inclination to tell her to go somewhere, but I kept my temper.

“I’ll see if Mrs. Wainwright needs me,” I said stiffly. “If she doesn’t—”

She lit a cigarette and smiled at me. “Listen,” she said, “I’ll not bother you much. Or long. I wouldn’t stay in this mausoleum for a million dollars. But we have to get along together for a while. Why not try?”