lf useful and
necessary--helping with the housework, putting away laundry, mending,
and so on--I went about concocting ways and methods of filling more
dazzlingly my old role.

Although my fever had practically disappeared by the time I went to bed
that night, I lolled down to the breakfast table the next morning later
than ever, making an impression in a shell-pink tea-gown; luxuriously
dawdled over a late egg and coffee; and then lazily borrowed a maid
about eleven o'clock and allowed her to unpack for me. Meanwhile I lay
back on the couch, criticized to Edith the tone of gray of the paper in
my room, carelessly suggested that there were too many articles on the
shelf from an artistic point of view, and then suffered myself to be
consulted on an invitation list for a party Edith was planning to give.
The description of my past two months' gaieties, recited in rather a
bored and blase manner, lacked none of the usual color. My references to
attentions from various would-be suitors proved to Edith and Alec that I
was keeping up my record.

One Saturday afternoon not long after my return to Hilton, Edith and I
attended a tea at the Country Club. The terrace, open to the sky and
covered with a dozen small round tables, made a pretty sight--girls in
light-colored gowns and flowery hats predominating early in the
afternoon, but gradually, from mysterious regions of lockers and
shower-baths below, joined by men in white flannels and tennis-shoes.

Edith's and my table was popular that day. I had been away from Hilton
for so long that a lot of our friends gathered about us to welcome me
home. I was chatting away to a half dozen of them, when I saw two men
strolling up from the seventeenth green. One of the men was
Breckenridge Sewall. I glanced over the rim of my cup the second time
to make certain. Yes, it was Breck--the same old blase,
dissipated-looking Breck. I had thought he was still in Europe. To
reach the eighteenth tee the men had to pass within ten feet of the
terrace. My back would be toward them. I didn't know if a second
opportunity would be offered me. Grassmere, the Sewall estate, was not
open this year. Breck might be gone by the next day. I happened at the
time to be talking about a certain tennis tournament with a man who
had been an eye-witness. I rose and put down my cup of tea.

"Come over and tell me about it, please," I said, smiling upon him.
"I've finished. Take my chair, Phyllis," I added sweetly