Bottomley came noiselessly, discreetly, across the hall.  Instantly the woman in blue and silver was all the mistress.

“Is Mr. Ward in, Bottomley?”

“He dined at ’ome, Mrs. Carter.”

“Oh, thank you!  You may lock up, then.  Good-night, Mr. Carter!  Good-night, Bottomley!”

She was gone.  The blue and silver gown and the bunched folds of the furred coat vanished on the stairway landing.  The tall clock that she passed struck eleven.  And Richard, going into his library, realized that he was deeply and passionately in love.  He could think of nothing else—­he did not wish to think of anything else.  Her face came between him and his book, her voice loitered in his ears, her precise, pretty phrasing, the laughter that sometimes lurked beneath her tones.

He went upstairs, and to his own suite.  There was a door between his own sitting room and the room that had been Isabelle’s.  From the other side of his door, to-night, came the murmur of voices:  Harriet and Nina were talking.  Their conversation seemed full of fascination to Richard, although he could not hear a word, and would not have made an effort to do so.  But he liked the thought of this lovely woman near his little girl, of their conferences and confidences.

Next day Harriet told him that Nina had been talking of young Hopper.

“It seems that this awkward, tongue-tied youth is desperately enamoured of Rosa Artures, of the Metropolitan Opera Company,” Harriet said in rich amusement.  “Of course the Artures is forty-five, and has a domestic life that is the delight of the women’s magazines.  But poor little Hopper haunts her performances, and sends her orchids, just the same.  He had never met her until a week or two ago, then some friends had her and her husband on their yacht, and he was there.  And she ate, it seems, and laughed, and even drank a little too much—­he’s entirely disillusioned!  Isn’t it too bad?  And somebody told me about it, so I encouraged Nina to get him to talk last night.  They talked only too well!  They exchanged tragedies.”

“Well, that won’t hurt her!” Richard said, thoughtfully.

“Hurt her!” Harriet answered, eagerly.  “It will be the best thing in the world for her!”

They were at the country club; Harriet chaperoning Nina, who was down at the tennis court with a group of young persons; Richard breathless and happy from a hard game of eighteen holes.  He had encountered her on the porch, on his way to the showers, experiencing, as he did so, the thrill that belongs only to the unexpected encounter.  Now they loitered at the railing, in the shade of the green awnings, as entirely oblivious of watching eyes as if the clubhouse were the library at home.

“Nina is charming as a confidante,” Harriet said, “and she would make a boy of that type a delightful wife.  She is the sort that marries early, or not at all. and I’m going deliberately to encourage this affair in a quiet way.  He’s a dear fellow, domestic and shy; they’d love their home and their children and Nina would develop into the ideal wife and mother.  She’s discriminating, she makes nice friends, she has splendid French and Spanish.  She looks lovely to-day; I persuaded her to leave her glasses at home, even if she did miss them a little, and she has on one of the gowns we bought for the Brazilian trip.”