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of steel, and the spray of tiny lines around the corners of his eyes that I’d always associated with laughter didn’t have any laughter in them now. The look on his face was a kind of wary contempt—like the look of a prizefighter waiting for his opponent to lead with a tricky left below the belt. Corlisses neck was fat in back and a little moist, and a lock of hair that was supposed to cover up his bald spot had slipped down and uncovered it. I don’t know what it is about people’s backs that’s so revealing.
    Sylvia glanced back at Pete and started to smile. The smile changed to a sharp flicker of anxiety. Her face went blank and social again as she turned back to make some remark to Corliss.
    Senor Delvalle and I followed them through the doorway and past the iron staircase. Ruth Sherwood was almost to the dining room door—but not quite. Then she stopped abruptly. There was the sound of a key in the lock of the corridor door at the end of the little passage beside the stairs. The door opened. A girl’s voice said, “Thank you—just put it in here, please.”
    I couldn’t see her, I could only hear her. But I could see Ruth Sherwood. She was wonderful.
    “Oh, how nice!” she cried, as if she’d got the pleasantest surprise in all the world. She left Sam Wharton and rushed forward into the passage. “My dear! I didn’t expect you till tomorrow. Do come—I want you to meet my guests. We’re just going in to dinner.”
    We were all just standing there, waiting. Then Ruth Sherwood came back. Beside her was a girl, about eighteen, I imagine. But it wasn’t that that made my hand on Senor Delvalle’s arm contract as sharply as if I’d been struck an unexpected blow. It was the girl herself. She was the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen in all my life.
    Every one straightened up as if a star had suddenly fallen into the middle of the hall. Through the sudden silence Ruth Sherwood’s voice came as cool as April. Only her knuckles showed white where she gripped her daughter’s arm.
    “I want you to meet a young friend of mine from New York,” she said. “Barbara Shipley. This is Mrs. Wharton, Barbara, and Mr. Wharton, and Lady Alicia Wrenn—”
    I didn’t listen to the rest of it. All I was acutely aware of was Senor Delvalle’s saying, “I thought you weren’t the fainting type, Mrs. Latham.” And Lady Alicia saying, “I hope she’s had her dinner. I won’t sit down with thirteen at table. The last time I did, one of the guests was dead before morning.”

5
    The girl standing there—Barbara Shipley, I had to remember to call her—broke off her shy and bewildered acknowledgment of her mother’s introductions to answer Lady Alicia’s brusque remark. “—I’ve had dinner already, coming down on the train.”
    She was almost as tall as her mother, with that sort of heart-breaking clarity and youngness that no amount of bright red lipstick seems to affect. She had on the uniform of her age—a brown skirt and tan sweater and checked jacket, with a short fur coat over her arm and a brown felt hat in her hand. Her hair was reddish gold, cut in a long loosely curled bob, and her eyes were the color of tawny sherry with the sunlight shining through it.
    “She’s really lovely,” I thought, my mind searching like mad—and in vain—for some explanation of this fantastic situation. And no one could possibly have guessed what the situation was. The bewildered uncertain look in her face could so easily have been embarrassment at bursting in on a dinner party the day before she was expected that nobody could think it was odd at all.
    “Please go on in,” she said to her mother. “Can’t I just go up, and—”
    “Of course, and come down after dinner,” Ruth Sherwood said. She turned to the suet butler. “Have Martha take Miss Shipley’s things to the green room. You’ll find everything you want, my dear. Make yourself completely at home. I’m sorry we’re so late.”
    She moved