My anxiety concerning Lillian stayed with me all through the evening.  I awoke in the night from troubled dreams of her to equally troubled thoughts concerning her.  And my concern was complicated by a message which Dicky received the next forenoon.

We had barely finished breakfast when the telephone rang and Dicky answered.

“Hello,” I heard him say.  “Yes, this is Graham.  Oh!  Mr. Gordon! how do you do?”

My heart skipped a beat.

“Why! that’s awfully kind of you,” Dicky was saying, “but we couldn’t possibly accept, because we have guests coming ourselves.  We expect to have a regular old-fashioned country dinner here at home.  But, why do you not come out to us?  Oh, no, you wouldn’t disturb any plans at all—­they’ve been thoroughly upset already.  We had planned to have my sister and her family, six in all, spend this holiday with us, but yesterday we found they could not come.  So we’re inviting what friends we can find who are not otherwise engaged to help us eat up the turkey.  You will be more than welcome if you will join us.  All right, then.  Do you know about trains?  Yes, any taxi driver can tell you where we are.  Good-by.”

I did not dare to look at my mother-in-law as Dicky came toward us after answering Robert Gordon’s telephone message.

I think Dicky was a trifle afraid, also, of his mother’s verdict, for his attitude was elaborately apologetic as he explained his invitation to me.

“Your friend, Gordon, has just gotten in from one of those mysterious voyages of his to parts unknown,” he said.  “He was delayed in reaching the city, only got in last night, too late to telephone us.  Seems he had some cherished scheme of having us his guests at a blowout.  Wouldn’t mind going if we hadn’t asked these people here, for they say his little dinners are something to dream about, they’re so unique.  Of course, there was nothing else for me to do but to invite him out.  I thought you wouldn’t mind.”

In Dicky’s tone there was a doubtful inflection which I read correctly.  He knew of my interest in the elderly man of mystery who had known my parents so well, and I was sure that he thought I would be overjoyed because he had extended the invitation.

I was glad that I could honestly disabuse his mind of this idea, for I had a curious little feeling that Dicky disliked more than he appeared to do the attentions paid to me by Mr. Gordon.

It was less than an hour before the taxi bearing the first of our guests swung into the driveway and Lillian and Harry Underwood stepped out.

Lillian’s head and face were so swathed in veils that I did not realize what the change in her appearance of which she had warned me was until I was alone with her in my room, which I intended giving up to her and her husband while they stayed.  Then, as she took off her hat and veils, I almost cried out in astonishment—­for at my first, unaccustomed glance, instead of the rouged and powdered face, and dyed hair, which to me had been the only unpleasant things about Lillian Underwood, the face of an old woman looked at me, and the hair above it was gray!