“I don’t need to forget Gordon,” was the serene response.  “I can keep him in the back of my mind.”

Mary picked up her pen, and underscored “Soup”; then:  “Constance, darling,” she said, “would you feel dreadfully if I went to work?”

“What kind of work, Mary?”

“In one of the departments,—­as stenographer.”

“But you don’t know anything about it.”

“Yes, I do, I’ve been studying ever since you went away.”

“But why, Mary?”

“Because—­oh, can’t you see, Constance?  I can’t be sure of—­Barry—­for future support.  And I won’t go with Aunt Frances.  And this house is simply eating up the little that father left us.  When you married, I thought the rental of the Tower Rooms would keep things going, but it won’t.  And I won’t sell the house.  I love every old stick and stone of it.  And anyhow, must I sit and fold my hands all the rest of my life just because I am a woman?”

“But Mary, dear, you will marry—­there’s Porter.”

“Constance, I couldn’t think of marriage that way—­as a chance to be taken care of.  Oh, Con, I want to wait—­for love.”

“Dearest, of course.  But you can live with us.  Gordon would never consent to your working—­he thinks it is dreadful for a woman to have to fight the world.”

Mary shook her head.  “No, it wouldn’t be fair to you.  It is never fair for an outsider to intrude upon the happiness of a home.  If your duet is ever to be a trio, it must not be with my big blundering voice, which could make only a discord, but a little piping one.”

She looked up to meet Constance’s shy, self-conscious eyes.

Mary flew to her, and knelt beside the couch.  “Darling, darling?”

And now the list was forgotten and Susan Jenks coming up for it was made a party to that tremulous secret, and the fate of the dinner was threatened until Mary, coming back to realities, kissed her sister and went to her desk, and held herself sternly to the five following courses of the family dinner which was to please the palates of those fresh from Paris and London and from castles by the sea; and which was to test to the utmost the measure of Susan’s culinary skill.

At dinner the next night, Gordon Richardson looked often and intently at Roger Poole, and when, under the warmth of the September moon, the men drifted out into the garden to smoke, he said, “I’ve just placed you.”

Roger nodded.  “I thought you’d remember.  You were one of the younger boys at St. Martin’s—­you haven’t changed much, but I couldn’t be sure.”

Gordon hesitated.  “I thought I heard from someone that you entered the Church.”

“I had a church in the South—­for three years.”

Gordon tried to keep the curiosity out of his voice.

“And you gave it up?”

“Yes.  I gave it up.”

That was all.  Not a word of the explanation for which he knew Gordon was waiting.  Nothing but the bare statement, “I gave it up.”