Though the room lay in the dusk of drawn curtains, the gown of Mrs. Wyeth showed unmistakably—­Mrs. Wyeth abandoned to the close, still embrace of an unrecognized man.

Distressed at the awkwardness of her position, Nancy hesitated, not knowing whether to retreat or go forward.  She had decided to go on, observing nothing—­and of course she had observed nothing save an agreeable incident in the oft impugned domesticity of Mr. and Mrs. Wyeth—­when a further revelation arrested her.

Even as she put her foot to the next step, the face of Mrs. Wyeth was lifted and Mrs. Wyeth’s big eyes fastened upon hers through the impartial mirror.  But their expression was not that of the placid matron observed in a passage of conjugal tenderness.  Rather, it was one of acute dismay—­almost fear.  Poor Mrs. Weyth, who had just said, “Doubtless I shall not be visible when you go!”

Even as she caught this look, Nancy started down the remaining steps, her cheeks hot from her own wretched awkwardness.  She wanted to hurry—­to run; she might still escape without having reason to suspect that the obscured person was other than he should be in the opinion of an exacting world.  Then, as her hand was at the door, while the silken rustling of that hurried disentanglement was in her ears, the voice of Wyeth sounded remotely from the rear of the house.  It seemed to come from far back in the library, removed from them by the length of the double drawing-rooms—­a comfortable, smooth, high-pitched voice—­lazy, drawling—­

“Oh, Linford!”

Linford! The name seemed to sink into the stillness of the great house, leaving no ripple behind.  Before an answer to the call could come, she had opened the great door and pulled it sharply to behind her.

Outside, she lingered a moment as if in serenely absent contemplation of the street, with the air of one who sought to recall her next engagement.  Then, gathering up her skirts, she went leisurely down the steps and passed unhurriedly from the view of those dismayed eyes that she felt upon her from the Wyeth window.

On the avenue she turned north and was presently alone in a shaded aisle of the park—­that park whose very trees and shrubs seem to have taken on a hard, knowing look from having been so long made the recipients of cynical confidences.  They seemed to understand perfectly what had happened, to echo Wyeth’s high-pitched, friendly drawl, with an added touch of mockery that was all their own—­“Oh—­Linford!”

CHAPTER XVII

FOR THE SAKE OF NANCY

It was toward six o’clock when she ascended the steps of the rectory.  Bernal, coming from the opposite direction, met her at the door.  Back of his glance, as they came together, was an intimation of hidden things, and at sight of him she was smitten by an electric flash of wonder.  The voice of Wyeth, that friendly, untroubled voice, she now remembered had called to no specific Linford.  In the paralysis of embarrassment that had seized her in that darkened hallway, she had failed to recall that there were at least two Linfords in existence.  In an instant her inner world, wrought into something like order in the past two hours, was again chaos.