“What about your mother? I suppose she can read.”

Janice looked shocked, then embarrassed.

“She and my grandmother haven’t got along very well since the divorce. My grandmother has never quite forgiven her. I’m afraid I’ve given you a very bad idea of us,” she went on valiantly. “Actually everything was all right until lately. My father comes in every now and then. When Mother’s out, of course. And when I can I go to his house. He married my governess, so, of course, I knew her.”

Hilda sensed a reserve at this point. She did what was an unusual thing for her. She reached over and patted the girl’s shoulder.

“Try to forget it,” she said. “I’m here, and I can read aloud. I read rather well, as a matter of fact. It’s my one vanity. Also I like to drive in the afternoons. I don’t get much of it.”

She smiled, but the girl did not respond. Her young face was grave and intent. Hilda thought she was listening again. When the house remained quiet she looked relieved.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “I guess I am tired. I’ve been watching my grandmother as best I could for the last month or two. I want to say this again before you see her, Miss Adams. She isn’t crazy. She is as sane as I am. If anybody says anything different, don’t believe it.”

The hall was still empty when they started up the stairs. The girl insisted on carrying the suitcase, and Hilda looked around her curiously. She felt vaguely disappointed. The house had interested her ever since the day of the wedding so long ago. She had visualized it as it must have been then, gay with flowers and music, and filled with people. But if there had ever been any glamour it was definitely gone.

Not that it was shabby. The long main hall, with doors right and left, was well carpeted, the dark paneling was waxed, the furniture old-fashioned but handsome. Like the big drawing-room, however, it was badly lighted, and Hilda, following the young figure ahead of her, wondered if it was always like that; if Janice Garrison lived out her young life in that half-darkness.

Outside the door of a front room upstairs the girl paused. She gave a quick look at Hilda before she tapped at the door, a look that was like a warning.

“It’s Jan, Granny,” she said brightly. “May I come in?”

Somebody stirred in the room. There were footsteps, and then a voice.

“Are you alone, Jan?”

“I brought the nurse Doctor Brooke suggested. You’ll like her, Grandmother. I do.”

Very slowly a key turned in a lock. The door was opened a few inches, and a little old woman looked out. Hilda was startled. She had remembered Mrs. Fairbanks as a dominant woman, handsome in a stately way, whose visits to the hospital as a member of the board had been known to send the nurses into acute attacks of jitters. Now she was incredibly shrunken. Her eyes, however, were still bright. They rested on Hilda shrewdly. Then, as though her inspection had satisfied her, she took off what was evidently a chain and opened the door.