“You’ve been drinkin’,” she said.  “Now don’t talk back.  The question in my mind is whether you’re clear enough in your head to understand what I’ve got to say, because it’s something you want to hear straight and quick.  See that table over in the corner?  Let’s see you walk to it and take off your hat and pull out a chair for me an’ tell the waiter we won’t eat till the rest of our party comes.  If you can do that, you can listen to me.”

Blake, feeling that someone else was going through these motions, obeyed.

“Legs are straight,” commented Rosalie Le Grange as she settled herself and picked at her glove buttons.  “How’s your head?  Are you takin’ in what I tell you?”

“Yes.  I hear you.  Why won’t you leave me alone?”

“Tongue’s pretty straight, too.  Can’t have much in you, though you do look like the last whisper of a misspent life.  Well, men can’t cry just when they want to, though a woman knows they cry oftener than any man ever sees.  You have to take it out in booze.”

Blake heard his own voice, far away, saying: 

“What did you come for?”

“You’ll know soon enough.  If I didn’t have the patience of an angel I’d never have waited.  Gee, those gentlemen’s clubs is exclusive!  Now I want you to remember you’re drunk and keep quiet and not hurry me.  I’ve got things to tell you.  Miss Markham came in from a walk this morning—­”

Dr. Blake saw his own hand lift in a gesture of repulsion, heard his own voice say: 

“I don’t want to hear about her.”

“Will you kindly remember,” said Rosalie Le Grange, “that you’re supposed to be drunk?  She came in from a walk this morning about half past ten, in a worse state than I ever saw her.  I didn’t much care, way I felt about her then—­you know—­now let me go my own way.  Mrs. Markham was shut in her room all the morning.  I was busy packing—­I was getting ready to send in my notice but didn’t, thank our stars—­an’ I didn’t run onto her but once or twice.  She was movin’ about the house, and her face was like death.

“Just before lunch, I came down to the library, lookin’ for a sewin’ basket.  Mrs. Markham was at the table, writin’ a note.  In meanders Annette Markham an’ begins to pull out the books in the library, listless.  She’d open one, flip the pages, put it back and open another.  She kept that up quite some time.  I wasn’t noticing special until she took out three or four together, reached into the space they left and pulled out a sizable gray book that had fallen down behind the stock—­or been put there!

“Mrs. Markham had just looked up, and I saw her git stiff.  She spoke quick—­’Annette!’—­jest like that—­sharp, you know.  Annette looked at her.  Mrs. Markham reached over and took the book away.  The girl, never looked down at it again, I can swear to that—­she was starin’ straight at her aunt.  Mrs. Markham dropped the book on the table, but she put her elbows on it, and said:  ’I’d been hunting everywhere for that—­I’m glad you found it.’  Annette never said a word, never tried to get the book back; she jest went on rummaging.