“What if she is?  She’s loyal to the core, in the first place.  In the second, she’s criminally liable.  As liable as I am.”

“There is one thing, David, I ought to know.  What has become of the Carlysle girl?”

“She left the stage.  There was a sort of general conviction she was implicated and—­I don’t know, Lucy.  Sometimes I think she was.”  He sighed.  “I read something about her coming back, some months ago, in ‘The Valley.’  That was the thing she was playing the spring before it happened.”  He turned on her.  “Don’t get that in your head with the rest.”

“I wonder, sometimes.”

“I know it.”

Outside the slamming of an automobile door announced Dick’s return, and almost immediately Minnie rang the old fashioned gong which hung in the lower hall.  Mrs. Crosby got up and placed a leaf of lettuce between the bars of the bird cage.

“Dinner time, Caruso,” she said absently.  Caruso was the name Dick had given the bird.  And to David:  “She must be in her thirties now.”

“Probably.”  Then his anger and anxiety burst out.  “What difference can it make about her?  About Donaldson’s wife?  About any hang-over from that rotten time?  They’re gone, all of them.  He’s here.  He’s safe and happy.  He’s strong and fine.  That’s gone.”

In the lower hall Dick was taking off his overcoat.

“Smell’s like chicken, Minnie,” he said, into the dining room.

“Chicken and biscuits, Mr. Dick.”

“Hi, up there!” he called lustily.  “Come and feed a starving man.  I’m going to muffle the door-bell!”

He stood smiling up at them, very tidy in his Sunday suit, very boyish, for all his thirty-two years.  His face, smilingly tender as he watched them, was strong rather than handsome, quietly dependable and faintly humorous.

“In the language of our great ally,” he said, “Madame et Monsieur, le diner est servi.”

In his eyes there was not only tenderness but a somewhat emphasized affection, as though he meant to demonstrate, not only to them but to himself, that this new thing that had come to him did not touch their old relationship.  For the new thing had come.  He was still slightly dazed with the knowledge of it, and considerably anxious.  Because he had just taken a glance at himself in the mirror of the walnut hat-rack, and had seen nothing there particularly to inspire —­well, to inspire what he wanted to inspire.

At the foot of the stairs he drew Lucy’s arm through his, and held her hand.  She seemed very small and frail beside him.

“Some day,” he said, “a strong wind will come along and carry off Mrs. Lucy Crosby, and the Doctors Livingstone will be obliged hurriedly to rent aeroplanes, and to search for her at various elevations!”

David sat down and picked up the old fashioned carving knife.

“Get the clubs?” he inquired.

Dick looked almost stricken.