Harriet mounted the stairs, threaded the familiar, pleasant hallways above.  She and Nina had a luxurious suite on the second floor, shut off from the rest of the house by a single door, and rather remotely placed in a wing that commanded a superb view of the river.  There were guest rooms on this floor, Richard Carter’s room and his wife’s beautiful rooms, and there was an upstairs sitting room.  But Madame Carter and her grandson and his friends had their rooms on the third floor, the old lady demanding a quiet and isolation that her daughter-in-law’s proximity did not favour.

Nina, half-dressed, was sprawling luxuriously on her bed when Harriet came in.  The three rooms of their suite were joined by doors almost always open; they were small rooms, but to both the young women they had always seemed entirely satisfactory.  Just now they were in shade, but outside the windows the blue river glittered, and the fresh, heavy foliage of the trees moved softly, and inside was every charm of furnishing, of brilliant flowered draperies, and of exquisite order.  There was a business-like heap of mail on Harriet’s big desk; there were flowers everywhere; fan-tailed Japanese gold fish moved languidly about in a tall bowl of clear glass, and Nina’s emerald-green parrot walked upon his gaily painted perch, and muttered in a significant and chuckling undertone.  Glass doors were open upon a square porch, and the sweet afternoon air stirred the crisp, transparent curtains.

Harriet shut the door, and leaned against it, and the world spun about her.  What now?  What now?  What now? hammered her heart.  Nina tossed aside her magazine, and regarded her with affectionate reproach.

“You ran upstairs!” she said.  “I’m lying on your bed because Maude had the laundry all over mine.  Are you going to lie down?”

“No, my dear!” said Harriet, in an odd, breathy whisper.

“You did run upstairs!” murmured Nina.  She sat up, and put her bare feet on the floor, groping for slippers, and yawned, with a red face.  “What time is it?”

“It’s—­” Harriet shook back the ruffle at her wrist, twisted her arm slightly, and looked blindly down.

“Well?” said Nina, when she dropped her hand.  But Harriet, smiling at her blankly, had to look again.

“Six, dear—­almost.  Brush your hair, and get into something, and we’ll have half an hour before dinner comes up.  I must be downstairs for awhile to-night, I want to see just how the new cook sends dinner in Your mother wasn’t at all satisfied with luncheon yesterday.  I don’t know why this comes to me,” she added, busy with her mail in the little sitting room.  “Something your father ordered through the club.  I’ll send that to Mr. Fox.  Here’s the bill for your two hats—­Miss Nina Carter, by Miss Field.”

“What was the blue one?” asked Nina in the doorway, from a cloud of hair.

“The-blue-one,” Harriet said, absently, “was forty-five dollars.  Not bad for a smart little English hat with a little curled cock feather on it, was it?  It’s quite the nicest you’ve ever had, I think.”  What now?—­What now? hammered her heart.