Nina, shrewd and suspicious, sensed something of nervous strain in her when she came in, later that day, to borrow a hat.

“Look here, Elizabeth,” she began, “I want to talk to you.  Are you going to live in this—­this hole all your life?”

“Hole nothing,” Elizabeth said, hotly.  “Really, Nina, I do think you might be more careful of what you say.”

“Oh, it’s a dear old hole,” Nina said negligently.  “But hole it is, nevertheless.  Why in the world mother don’t manage her servants —­but no matter about that now.  Elizabeth, there’s a lot of talk about you and Dick Livingstone, and it makes me furious.  When I think that you can have Wallie Sayre by lifting your finger—­”

“And that I don’t intend to lift my finger,” Elizabeth interrupted.

“Then you’re a fool.  And it is Dick Livingstone!”

“It is, Nina.”

Nina’s ambitious soul was harrowed.

“That stodgy old house,” she said, “and two old people!  A general house-work girl, and you cooking on her Thursdays out!  I wish you joy of it.”

“I wonder,” Elizabeth said calmly, “whether it ever occurs to you that I may put love above houses and servants?  Or that my life is my own, to live exactly as I please?  Because that is what I intend to do.”

Nina rose angrily.

“Thanks,” she said.  “I wish you joy of it.”  And went out, slamming the door behind her.

Then, with only a day or so remaining before Dick’s departure, and Jim’s hand already reaching for the shuttle, Elizabeth found herself the object of certain unmistakable advances from Mrs. Sayre herself, and that at a rose luncheon at the house on the hill.

The talk about Dick and Elizabeth had been slow in reaching the house on the hill.  When it came, via a little group on the terrace after the luncheon, Mrs. Sayre was upset and angry and inclined to blame Wallie.  Everything that he wanted had come to him, all his life, and he did not know how to go after things.  He had sat by, and let this shabby-genteel doctor, years older than the girl, walk away with her.

Not that she gave up entirely.  She knew the town, and its tendency toward over-statement.  And so she made a desperate attempt, that afternoon, to tempt Elizabeth.  She took her through the greenhouses, and then through the upper floors of the house.  She showed her pictures of their boat at Miami, and of the house at Marblehead.  Elizabeth was politely interested and completely unresponsive.

“When you think,” Mrs. Sayre said at last, “that Wallie will have to assume a great many burdens one of these days, you can understand how anxious I am to have him marry the right sort of girl.”

She thought Elizabeth flushed slightly.

“I am sure he will, Mrs. Sayre.”

Mrs. Sayre tried a new direction.

“He will have all I have, my dear, and it is a great responsibility.  Used properly, money can be an agent of great good.  Wallie’s wife can be a power, if she so chooses.  She can look after the poor.  I have a long list of pensioners, but I am too old to add personal service.”