“Why should I? I wasn’t trying to make a good story of it.”

“You didn’t see who it was?” she asked, watching me intently.

“I fainted. That’s all I know.”

“You weren’t in a faint all night.”

Amy heard this from my sitting room and came in, with a hard glint in her eyes. For some reason she had hated Bessie from the first moment she came. Now she sent her out and slammed my door viciously behind her.

“I’m going to keep that damned little troublemaker out of here if it’s the last thing I do,” she sputtered. “What’s wrong with her anyhow? What’s she snooping around for? I’ll bet she’s playing some dirty little game of her own.”

Which as I look back was a mild term for the sort of game Bessie Wainwright was playing and was to play for some time to come.

I had my bad times. Tony, since the night at the playhouse, had been friendly but remote. He would sit by my bed, talking of inconsequential things or even lapsing into long silences. I wondered if he was drinking, and one night I was sure of it. He fell asleep in his chair, and Amy could hardly rouse him to get him out of it. When she came back I was wiping my eyes. She gave me a sharp look.

“Don’t be a sissy,” she said. “Let him forget that wife of his now and then. What else do you want him to do? Go and have a good cry?”

He did not do it again, and outside of Bessie’s visits my convalescence was undisturbed. Flowers and notes poured in, and on the fourth day, a Friday, an enormous box of roses came from Don Morgan, with a card evidently in his own handwriting: Do get well soon, my dear, Lydia misses you.

I was rather touched, but Amy was furious.

“Like him, isn’t it?” she said. “Probably called up and ordered them, and Lydia will pay the bill. What a fool she was anyhow, taking him back and nursing him. Nursing him! He’ll outlive her for years. His kind go on forever.”

She was wrong. Don Morgan did not go on forever. He had even then only a few more hours to live.

It was on Saturday that Maud gave her first dinner since her illness; only a dozen people or so, but it cheered everybody immensely. She looked pleased when she told me about it. “Tony is going to the club,” she said. “He hates bridge. I don’t know about Bessie. She usually makes her own plans.”

And Bessie did. A breathless Amy, gazing out the window that evening, reported them to me.

“Well, can you beat that,” she said. “Your boy friend was driving off when little poison ivy ran out and got into his car. All dressed up too. Better get that leg well in a hurry, Pat. She looks as though she’s out for blood.”

I lay back. There was nothing I could do about Tony, or Bessie either. Downstairs I could picture what was going on; Pierre shouting French at the kitchenmaids, the house gay with lights and flowers, and cars coming and going. I could hear the sharp slap of their doors as Gus closed them, and I was feeling rather sorry for myself when Margery Stoddard came up.