“Tony—­for Heaven’s sake—!” Isabelle was in an agony.  Somebody was approaching.  He had gotten to his feet, and was gloomily staring at the river, when Nina Carter, followed by a great white Russian hound, came flying down the steps.

“Mother—­” Nina, a tall, overgrown girl, with spectacles on her straight nose, and straight, light-brown hair in thick braids, stopped short and gave her mother’s companion a look of withering distaste.  “Mother,” she began again, “aren’t you coming up for tea?  Granny’s there, and the others, from tennis, and Mrs. Bellamy telephoned that she’s bringing some people over, and there’s nobody there but Granny and me!”

Nina was like her New England father, conscientious, serious, gravely condemnatory of the lax and the unconventional.

“Ask Betty Allen to pour,” said Mrs. Carter, regaining her composure rapidly, and assuming the air of hostess at once.

“Betty went home for a tub,” Nina explained.  “She’s coming back.  But, Mother,” she added, with a faintly reproachful and whining intonation, “really, you ought to be there—­”

Mrs. Carter knew this as well as Nina.  But she found the child extremely trying in this puritanical mood.  Granting that this affair with Tony did her, Isabelle, small credit, at least it was not for Nina to sit in judgment.  Rebellious, Isabelle fondled the loving nose of the hound with a small, brown, jewelled hand, and glanced dubiously at Tony’s uncompromising back.

“Trot back, Nina love,” said she to her daughter, cheerfully, “and ask Miss Harriet to come out and pour.  I’ll be there directly.  We’ll come right up.  Run along!”

To Nina, in this ignominious dismissal, there was sweet.  She adored “Miss Harriet,” the Miss Field who had been her governess and her mother’s secretary for the three happiest years of Nina’s somewhat sealed young life.  It would be “fun” to have Miss Field pour.  Nina leaped obediently up the steps, with a flopping of thick braids and the scrape of sturdy shoes, and the sweet summer world was in silence again.

Isabelle sat on, stroking the hound, her soul filled with perplexity.  The shadows were lengthening, the shafts of sunlight more bold and clear.  The hound, surprised at the silence, whined faintly.

“I wish it might have been Nina!” Isabelle said.  Anthony’s eloquent back gave her sudden understanding of his fury.  She got up, and went noiselessly toward him, and she felt a shudder shake him as she slipped her hand into his arm.  “Ah, please, Tony,” she pleaded, “what can I do?”

“Nothing!” he answered, suddenly pliant.  “Nothing, of course.”  And he turned to her a boyish face stern with pain.  “Of course you can do nothing, Cherie.  I’m not such a—­such a fool—­“his voice broke angrily—­“that I can’t see that!  Come on, we’ll go up and have tea—­with the Bellamys.  And I—­I’ll be going to-night.  I’ll say good-bye to you now—­and perhaps you’ll be good enough to make my good-byes to the others—­”