brilliant summer covers; the porches, with wicker tables and
chairs; the music room; the breakfast room all cheerful green and
white; the library, in cool north shadow; and the dining room,
long and dark and dignified, where maids were already moving
noiselessly about the business of dinner. Here in the hall was the
pleasant shade and coolness, the subtle drifting scent of early
summer flowers, space, and the simplicity of dark polished floors
and sombre rugs. The whole house seemed empty, lovely, silent,
after the confusion of the terrace and the heat of the summer day.

Harriet mounted the stairs, threaded the familiar, pleasant
hallways above. She and Nina had a luxurious suite on the second
floor, shut off from the rest of the house by a single door, and
rather remotely placed in a wing that commanded a superb view of
the river. There were guest rooms on this floor, Richard Carter's
room and his wife's beautiful rooms, and there was an upstairs
sitting room. But Madame Carter and her grandson and his friends
had their rooms on the third floor, the old lady demanding a quiet
and isolation that her daughter-in-law's proximity did not favour.

Nina, half-dressed, was sprawling luxuriously on her bed when
Harriet came in. The three rooms of their suite were joined by
doors almost always open; they were small rooms, but to both the
young women they had always seemed entirely satisfactory. Just now
they were in shade, but outside the windows the blue river
glittered, and the fresh, heavy foliage of the trees moved softly,
and inside was every charm of furnishing, of brilliant flowered
draperies, and of exquisite order. There was a business-like heap
of mail on Harriet's big desk; there were flowers everywhere; fan-
tailed Japanese gold fish moved languidly about in a tall bowl of