urse, Fred came in, and fell over a hassock looking for
matches. Edith opened the door of the den and called him to her
irritably, but Fred declined to leave the wood fire, and settled down
in his easy chair. After a while Edith came over and joined us, but she
snubbed Fred the entire evening, to his bewilderment. And when
conversation lagged, during the evening that followed, I tried to
remember what I had said, and knew I had done very badly. Only one thing
cheered me: she had not been angry, and she had understood. Blessed be
the woman that understands!

We broke up for the night about eleven. Mrs. Butler had come down for a
while, and had even played a little, something of Tschaikovsky's, a
singing, plaintive theme that brought sadness back into Margery's face,
and made me think, for no reason, of a wet country road and a plodding,
back-burdened peasant.

Fred and I sat in the library for a while after the rest had gone, and I
told him a little of what I had learned that afternoon.

"A second wife!" he said, "and a primitive type, eh? Well, did she shoot
him, or did Schwartz? The Lady or the Democratic Tiger?"

"The Tiger," I said firmly.

"The Lady," Fred, with equal assurance.

Fred closed the house with his usual care. It required the combined
efforts of the maids followed up by Fred, to lock the windows, it being
his confident assertion that in seven years of keeping house, he had
never failed to find at least one unlocked window.

On that night, I remember, he went around with his usual scrupulous
care. Then we went up to bed, leaving a small light at the telephone in
the lower hall: nothing else.

The house was a double one, built around a square hall below, which
served the purpose of a general sitting-room. From the front door a
short, narrow hall led back to this, with a room on either side, and
from it doors led into the rest of the lower floor. At one side the
stairs took the ascent easily, with two stops for landings, and
up-stairs the bedrooms opened from a similar, slightly smaller square
hall. The staircase to the third floor went up from somewhere back in
the nursery wing.

My bedroom was over the library, and Mrs. Butler and Margery Fleming had
connecting rooms, across the hall. Fred and Edith slept in the nursery
wing, so they would be near the children. In the square upper hall there
was a big reading table, a lamp, and some comfortable chairs. Here, when
they were alone, Fred read alou