Nina, Harriet reflected, had had a thorough dose of poison.  It would take, like many diseases, more poison to cure her, a counter dose.  Going to her room to change to one of the new gowns, Harriet had a moment of contempt for the new-found intimate, who could so unscrupulously play upon the girl’s hungry soul.  But with this situation it was possible to cope; there was definite comfort in the fact that Nina had not mentioned Royal Blondin.

Brave in the new gown, whose lustreless black velvet made even more brilliant her matchless skin, Harriet went to find Ward.  She met instead one of his house-guests, Corey Eaton, a man some years older than Ward, a big, rawboned, unscrupulous youth, with a wild and indiscriminate laugh.  Mr. Eaton, greeting her enthusiastically, admitted frankly that he was just up from bed, and that he had been “lit up like a battleship” last night, and that he still felt the effects of it.

“Mr. Eaton,” Harriet said, in an undertone, making another strategic decision, “come in here to the library, will you?  I want to speak to you.”

“When you speak to me thus,” said Corey Eaton, passionately, “I can refuse you naught!”

But he sobered instantly into tremendous gravity at Harriet’s first confidence.  She told him simply of Isabelle’s death.

“Well, that surely is rotten—­the poor old boy!” said Corey, affectionately.  “Ward’s mad about his mother, too!  Well, say, what do you know about that?  We’ll beat it, Miss Field, Nixon and I. We came in my car and we’ll go to the Jays’ for dinner.  Say, that is tough, though, isn’t it?”

It was not eloquent, but it was sincere, and Harriet made her thanks so personal and so flattering that the young man could only fervently push his plans for departure, swearing secrecy, and evidently touched by being taken into her confidence.  The fastnesses were yielding one after another; Harriet could have laughed as she left him at the foot of the stairs.  Bottomley respectfully addressed her as she turned back into the hall: 

“Miss Field, I wonder if you’d be so good—?”

She nodded, and accompanied him instantly into the pantry where they could be alone.

“It’s Madame,” said Bottomley, bitterly, “she’s just ’ad me up there agine, it’s really tryin’—­that’s what it is.  It’s tryin’!  Now she’ad to’ave her say about you bein’ at table, Miss Field.  I says that you ’ad stipulited that you was to be there.  Now, I says, and I says it arbitrarily like, and yet I says it respectful, too—–­”

“Now, just wait one moment, Bottomley,” Harriet said, soothingly.  “I want to talk to you and Pilgrim.  Is she in her room?  Suppose we go there?”

Pleased with the consideration in her manner, the outraged Bottomley led the way.  Mrs. Bottomley was enjoying a solitary cup of tea; she bustled hospitably for more cups.