An expression of dismay came over Annie’s face.  “Oh, dear,” she said, “I have only embroidered half a daisy and what will Aunt Harriet say?”

“You have embroidered a whole garden as nobody else can, if people only knew it,” said Alice.

“But Alice,” said Annie ruefully, “my embroidery is really awful and I don’t like to do it and the linen is so grimy that I am ashamed.  Oh, dear, I shall have to face Aunt Harriet with that half daisy!”

Alice laughed.  “She can’t kill you.”

“No, but I don’t like to have her so disappointed.”

Alice kissed Annie again before she went, and watched the slight figure flitting down between the box-rows, with a little frown of perplexity.  She wished that Annie had not told Margaret Edes about the book and yet she did not know why she wished so.  She was very far from expecting the results.  Alice was too noble herself to entertain suspicions of the ignobility of others.  Certainty she was obliged to confront, as she had confronted the affair of the night before.  It was, of course, the certainty that Margaret had been guilty of a disgraceful and treacherous deed which made her uneasy in a vague fashion now and yet she did not for one second dream of what was to occur at the next meeting of the Zenith Club.

That was at Mrs. Sturtevant’s and was the great affair of the year.  It was called, to distinguish it from the others, “The Annual Meeting,” and upon that occasion the husbands and men friends of the members were invited and the function was in the evening.  Margaret had wished to have the club at her own house, before the affair of Martha Wallingford, but the annual occasions were regulated by the letters of the alphabet and it was incontrovertibly the turn of the letter S and Mrs. Sturtevant’s right could not be questioned.  During the time which elapsed before this meeting, Margaret Edes was more actively unhappy than she had ever been in her life and all her strong will could not keep the traces of that unhappiness from her face.  Lines appeared.  Her eyes looked large in dark hollows.  Wilbur grew anxious about her.

“You must go somewhere for a change,” he said, “and I will get my cousin Marion to come here and keep house and look out for the children.  You must not be bothered even with them.  You need a complete rest and change.”

But Margaret met his anxiety with irritation.  She felt as if some fatal fascination confined her in Fairbridge and especially did she feel that she must be present at the annual meeting.  Margaret never for one minute formulated to herself why she had this fierce desire.  She knew in a horrible way at the back of her brain, but she kept the knowledge covered as with a veil even from herself.

She had a beautiful new gown made for the occasion.  Since she had lost so much colour, she was doubtful of the wisdom of wearing her favourite white and gold, or black.  She had a crepe of a peculiar shade of blue which suited her and she herself worked assiduously embroidering it in a darker shade which brought out the colour of her eyes.  She looked quite herself when the evening came and Wilbur’s face brightened as he looked at her in her trailing blue with a little diamond crescent fastening a tiny blue feather in her golden fluff of hair.