on: "It can't be that you're worried about Leila, for Charlotte
Wynn told me she'd been there last week, and there was a big
party arriving when she left: Fresbies and Gileses, and Mrs. Lorin
Boulger--all the board of examiners! If Leila has passed _that_, she's
got her degree."

Mrs. Lidcote had dropped down into a corner of the sofa where she had
sat during their talk of the week before. "I was stupid," she began
abruptly. "I ought to have gone to Ridgefield with Susy. I didn't see
till afterward that I was expected to."

"You were expected to?"

"Yes. Oh, it wasn't Leila's fault. She suffered--poor darling; she was
distracted. But she'd asked her party before she knew I was arriving."

"Oh, as to that--" Ide drew a deep breath of relief. "I can understand
that it must have been a disappointment not to have you to herself just
at first. But, after all, you were among old friends or their children:
the Gileses and Fresbies--and little Charlotte Wynn." He paused a moment
before the last name, and scrutinized her hesitatingly. "Even if they
came at the wrong time, you must have been glad to see them all at
Leila's."

She gave him back his look with a faint smile. "I didn't see them."

"You didn't see them?"

"No. That is, excepting little Charlotte Wynn. That child is exquisite.
We had a talk before luncheon the day I arrived. But when her mother
found out that I was staying in the house she telephoned her to leave
immediately, and so I didn't see her again."

The colour rushed to Ide's sallow face. "I don't know where you get such
ideas!"

She pursued, as if she had not heard him: "Oh, and I saw Mary Giles for
a minute too. Susy Suffern brought her up to my room the last evening,
after dinner, when all the others were at bridge. She meant it
kindly--but it wasn't much use."

"But what were you doing in your room in the evening after dinner?"

"Why, you see, when I found out my mistake in coming,--how embarrassing
it was for Leila, I mean--I simply told her I was very tired, and
preferred to stay upstairs till the party was over."

Ide, with a groan, struck his hand against the arm of his chair. "I
wonder how much of all this you simply imagined!"

"I didn't imagine the fact of Harriet Fresbie's not even asking if
she might see me when she knew I was in the house. Nor of Mary Giles's
getting Susy, at the eleventh hour, to smuggle her up to my room when
the others wouldn't know where she'd gone; nor poor L