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wife's
determination to ignore it. The same motive kept Nona from saying
anything more; and the lunch ended in a clatter of talk about other
things. But what puzzled Nona was that her father's communication
to Lita should have concerned the fact that she was dining at his
house that night. It was unlike Dexter Manford to remember the
fact himself (as Miss Bruss's frantic telephoning had testified),
and still more unlike him to remind his wife's guests, even if he
knew who they were to be—which he seldom did. Nona pondered.
"They must have been going somewhere together—he told me he was
engaged tonight—and Lita's in a temper because they can't. But
then she's in a temper about everything today." Nona tried to make
that cover all her perplexities. She wondered if it did as much
for Jim.

IV
    It would have been hard, Nona Manford thought, to find a greater
contrast than between Lita Wyant's house and that at which, two
hours later, she descended from Lita Wyant's smart Brewster.
    "You won't come, Lita?" The girl paused, her hand on the motor
door. "He'd like it awfully."
    Lita shook off the suggestion. "I'm not in the humour."
    "But he's such fun—he can be better company than anybody."
    "Oh, for you he's a fad—for me he's a duty; and I don't happen to
feel like duties." Lita waved one of her flower–hands and was off.
    Nona mounted the pock–marked brown steps. The house was old Mrs.
Wyant's, a faded derelict habitation in a street past which fashion
and business had long since flowed. After his mother's death
Wyant, from motives of economy, had divided it into small flats.
He kept one for himself, and in the one overhead lived his mother's
former companion, the dependent cousin who had been the cause of
his divorce. Wyant had never married her; he had never deserted
her; that, to Nona's mind, gave one a fair notion of his character.
When he was ill—and he had developed, rather early, a queer sort
of nervous hypochondria—the cousin came downstairs and nursed him;
when he was well his visitors never saw her. But she was reported
to attend to his mending, keep some sort of order in his accounts,
and prevent his falling a prey to the unscrupulous. Pauline
Manford said it was probably for the best. She herself would have
thought it natural, and in fact proper, that her former husband
should have married his cousin; as he had not, she preferred to
decide that since the divorce they had been "only friends." The
Wyant code was always a puzzle to her. She never met the cousin
when she called on her former husband; but Jim, two or three times
a year, made it a point to ring the bell of the upper flat, and at
Christmas sent its invisible tenant an azalea.
    Nona ran up the stairs to Wyant's door. On the threshold a thin
gray–haired lady with a shadowy face awaited her.
    "Come in, do. He's got the gout, and can't get up to open the
door, and I had to send the cook out to get something tempting for
his dinner."
    "Oh, thank you, cousin Eleanor." The girl looked sympathetically
into the other's dimly tragic eyes. "Poor Exhibit A! I'm sorry
he's ill again."
    "He's been—imprudent. But the worst of it's over. It will
brighten him up to see you. Your cousin Stanley's there."
    "Is he?" Nona half drew back, feeling herself faintly redden.
    "He'll be going soon. Mr. Wyant will be disappointed if you don't
go in."
    "But of course I'm going in."
    The older woman smiled a worn smile, and vanished upstairs while
Nona slipped off her furs. The girl knew it would be useless to
urge cousin Eleanor to stay. If one wished to see her one had to
ring at her own door.
    Arthur Wyant's shabby sitting–room was full of February sunshine,
illustrated magazines, newspapers and cigar ashes. There were some
books on shelves, shabby also: Wyant had apparently once cared for
them, and his talk was still coloured by traces of early
cultivation, especially when visitors like Nona or Stan Heuston
were with him. But the range of his allusions suggested