A number of trifling incidents occurred to bring them together.  The cook left abruptly, and Mrs. Bassett was reduced to despair.  Bassett, gloomily pacing his veranda, after hearing his wife’s arraignment of the world in general and domestic servants in particular, felt the clouds lift when Sylvia came down from a voluntary visit to the invalid.  He watched her attack the problem by long-distance telephone.  Sensations that were new and strange and sweet assailed him as he sat near in the living-room of his own house, seeing her at the telephone desk by the window, hearing her voice.  Her patience in the necessary delays while connection was made with the city, her courtesy to her unseen auditors, the smile, the occasional word she flung at him—­as much as to say, of course it’s bothersome but all will soon come right!—­these things stirred in him a wistfulness and longing such as the hardy oak must feel when the south wind touches its bare boughs with the first faint breath of spring.

“It’s all arranged—­fixed—­accomplished!” Sylvia reported at last.  “There’s a cook coming by the afternoon train.  You’ll attend to meeting her?  Please tell Mrs. Bassett it’s Senator Ridgefield’s cook who’s available for the rest of the summer, as the family have gone abroad.  She’s probably good—­the agent said Mrs. Ridgefield had brought her from Washington.  Let me see!  She must have Thursday afternoon off and a chance to go to mass on Sunday.  And you of course stand the railroad fare to and from the lake; it’s so nominated in the bond!”

She dismissed the whole matter with a quick gesture of her hands.

Their next interview touched again his domestic affairs.  He had telegraphed Marian to come home without eliciting a reply, and the next day he found in a Chicago newspaper a spirited and much-beheadlined account of the smashing of the Willings’ automobile in a collision.  It seemed that they had run into Chicago for a day’s shopping and had met with this misadventure on one of the boulevards.  The Willings’ chauffeur had been seriously injured.  Miss Marian Bassett, definitely described as the daughter of Morton Bassett, the well-known Indiana politician, had been of the party.  Allen Thatcher was another guest of the Willings, a fact which added to Bassett’s anger.  He had never visited his hatred of Thatcher upon Allen, whom he had regarded as a harmless boy not to be taken seriously; but the conjunction of his daughter’s name with that of his enemy’s son in a newspaper of wide circulation in Indiana greatly enraged him.  It was bound to occasion talk, and he hated publicity.  The Willings were flashy people who had begun to spend noisily the money earned for them by an automobile patent.  The indictment he drew against Marian contained many “counts.”  He could not discuss the matter with his wife; he carefully kept from her the newspaper story of the smash-up.  The hotel to which the Willings had retired for repairs was mentioned, and Bassett resolved to go to Chicago and bring Marian home.