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somewhere in the house. In the pantry, however, William in his shirt sleeves was reading the newspaper, and Lizzie was working at the range. Maggie and Ellen were in the laundry.
    It was then that I remembered Jordan and went upstairs. There was a telephone on my bedside table, but she was not there; and I finally found her in her own room, pressing a dress of Juliette’s with what was obviously a cold iron. She gave me a frigid glance.
    “Did you want me for something, miss?” she asked, with a mock humility not unlike Juliette’s at times.
    “I wondered where you were,” I said dryly. “And now I think of it, I want to ask you something. Were you by any chance in the hospital suite the day you came?”
    “The hospital suite, miss? Where is it?”
    “Up the staircase at the end of the hall.”
    She pursed her lips primly.
    “Then I haven’t seen it,” she said. “I don’t go where I don’t belong.”
    I felt beaten. Not only beaten but dismissed. I went to the porch and lay back in my steamer chair, but peace had gone out of the world and even out of the bay. There were other boats there now, a sloop, a yawl with a black hull and spreading sails, a speed boat, a small cabin cruiser. The summer colony was arriving at last, and well I knew how fast the news would spread.
    “Juliette at Marcia’s? Juliette!”
    “So I hear. What do you suppose she’s after?”
    Knowing Juliette, they would know quite well that she was after something.
    It was lunchtime that day when Juliette returned from her ride. I heard the car, followed by her voice in her room and later by the shower in her bathroom. She had never had any sense of time, and I went down nervously to postpone the meal until she appeared. To my surprise, Jordan was already in the kitchen.
    “Madam is tired,” she was saying. “She will have some tea and toast in her room.”
    Lizzie turned a red and angry face to her.
    “All right,” she said. “I heard you. And you can tell madam that this is my afternoon out and she’ll get a cold supper. I cook no other meals this day.”
    But it seemed to me that Jordan looked disturbed, and when later on I met her carrying down Juliette’s tray, it was apparently untouched. I thought at the time that the woman had reported Arthur’s conversation over the telephone, and that it had upset her; but I know now that something had happened on that ride. Juliette had seen someone, and she was frightened.
    I had a number of elderly callers that afternoon. Evidently the news had got about. Old Mrs. Pendexter was the first, her Queen Mary hat higher and more trimmed than ever in deference to the occasion, more than the usual chains around her neck, and her black eyes snapping with curiosity.
    “Well, Marcia,” she said. “Where’s that hussy?”
    “Juliette? She’s resting. She took a ride this morning.”
    “What on earth is she doing here?” she demanded. “Has she no decency?”
    “Well,” I said, smiling as best I could, “you know her. She seems to be settled for a few days anyhow. But she came on business.”
    “Business! More alimony, I suppose. And that wretched Arthur paying her with blood and sweat. See here, Marcia, you’re a lady, whatever that means nowadays. She isn’t. She never was, for all her fine feathers. Why don’t you kick her out?”
    I suppose I was tired and worried. My eyes filled, and she leaned over and patted me on the arm.
    “Don’t mind me, child,” she said. “I’m a bitter old woman. But I’ve seen you fighting to keep going, with four servants in a house that used to have ten and needs a dozen, and I’m no fool. You’re helping Arthur, of course.”
    She changed the subject then. It looked like a good season. The Burtons were in Europe but had rented their house to a family named Dean; some Lake Forest people, she’d heard. Her own daughter Marjorie was on the way, and the Hutchinsons were due at any time at The Lodge, the next estate to Sunset.
    She was followed