“I’ll copy it off for him,” said Grant.

Madam Bowker and Craig exchanged amused glances.  “You’ll give it to him in Madam Bowker’s handwriting,” ordered Craig.  “You told Scones to keep his mouth shut, when you paid him?”

The other three looked conscious, and Margaret reddened slightly at this coarse brusqueness of phrase.  “Yes,” said Grant.  “He’ll refuse to be interviewed.  I’ll go and attend to this.”

“We’re having a gala lunch, at once—­in the apartment,” said the old lady.  “So, come back quickly.”

When he was gone she said to the two:  “And now what are your plans?”

“We have none,” said Craig.

“I had thought—­” began Margaret.  She hesitated, colored, went on:  “Grandmother, couldn’t you get the Millicans’ camp in the Adirondacks?  I heard Mrs. Millican say yesterday they had got it all ready and had suddenly decided to go abroad instead.”

“Certainly,” said the old lady.  “I’ll telephone about it at once, and I’ll ask the Millicans to lunch with us to-day.”

She left them alone.  Craig, eyeing his bride covertly, had a sense of her remoteness, her unattainability.  He was like a man who, in an hour of rashness and vanity, has boasted that he can attain a certain mountain peak, and finds himself stalled at its very base.  He decided that he must assert himself; he tried to nerve himself to seize her in his old precipitate, boisterous fashion.  He found that he had neither the desire to do so nor the ability.  He had never thought her so full of the lady’s charm.  That was just the trouble—­the lady’s charm, not the human being’s; not the charm feminine for the male.

“I hope you’ll be very patient with me,” said she, with a wan smile.  “I am far from well.  I’ve been debating for several days whether or not to give up and send for the doctor.”

He did not see her real motive in thus paving the way for the formation of the habit of separate lives; he eagerly believed her, was grateful to her, was glad she was ill.  So quaint is the interweaving of thought, there flashed into his mind at that moment:  “After all, I needn’t have blown in so much money on trousseau.  Maybe I can get ’em to take back those two suits of twenty-dollar pajamas.  Grant went in too deep.”  This, because the money question was bothering him greatly, the situation that would arise when his savings should be gone; for now it seemed to him he would never have the courage to discuss money with her.  If she could have looked in upon his thoughts she would have been well content; there was every indication of easy sailing for her scheme to reconstruct his career.

“When do you think of starting for the Adirondacks?” he asked, with a timidity of preliminary swallowing and blushing that made her turn away her face to hide her smile.  How completely hers was the situation!  She felt the first triumphant thrill of her new estate.

“To-night,” she replied.  “We can’t put it off.”