She seemed all right. She went to the bank of the river and stood there. Then she sat down on the bench where she and Father had so often sat on summer evenings. She was there for a long time, and at last I went back to my packing. When I looked out again Lydia was standing beside her.

I shall never forget Lydia that day. She went quietly to the house and back to the kitchen, where the maids were preparing to leave. Then she came in to me.

“Have you a minute to run over and see Audrey?” she said. “She’s not been well, and I’ve put her to bed.”

“I’d better wait for Mother.”

“I’ll bring her in,” she said. “This has been a hard time for her, but she has had a happy life. Always remember that, Pat.”

When I came back from next door Lydia had indeed brought her in. She put her arms around me and told me.

“No pain, no anything, Pat,” she said. “Such a wonderful way to go. And I think she wanted to be with your father.”

I never went back to the house. Lydia took me home with her, and I stayed there during those first desperate weeks. I think she would have kept me indefinitely, but her house was small, and I began to feel that Audrey resented me. She was spoiled and jealous even then, although she was the most lovely child I ever saw. In the end I took a room at Miss Mattie’s and faced a world which had no particular use for a girl of nineteen who could play good tennis, indifferent golf, speak fair French, and ride a horse when she had a horse to ride.

It was Lydia who suggested the business course, Lydia who dictated to me at night while I struggled with shorthand and a typewriter. She never let me lose courage.

“Things look pretty dark just now, Pat. I know it. But they have a way of straightening out. I know that. It takes time and courage, and after all, you’re young. You’ll marry someday.”

That was the nearest she ever came to mentioning her own trouble, but sometimes I had seen her watching Audrey as though she was afraid she had inherited some of Don Morgan’s instability as well as his charm. He had plenty of that. It was a legend in Beverly that when old Mrs. Anderson’s vicious parrot got loose and flew up into a tree, Don Morgan had simply talked to it from below and it came down. Moreover, that it had climbed up his trousers leg and sat on his shoulder, making soft cooing sounds.

But Don had been gone for years by that time, and if I knew Audrey, her lovely little head would always dominate the sturdy pump she called her heart.

In the end I found a position in the city, but a slackening of business promptly killed it. For a while I had a small income from Father’s real estate. Then some of it was sold for taxes, and the remainder barely carried itself. As his insurance had gone to pay his debts, I was practically penniless.