She fell silent.  Germaine appeared with a tray, and began to loosen and brush the dark hair, and Isabelle went automatically to the business of creaming and rubbing, still shaken, but every minute more mistress of herself.  With the thick, dark switch gone, Harriet was almost shocked by the change in the severely exposed forehead and face.  Isabelle looked fully her age now, more than her age.  But the younger woman knew that however honest her desire to disenchant her young lover, no woman ever risks his seeing her thus.  Isabelle might weep, and pray, and suggest supreme sacrifice, but it would be the corseted and perfumed and beautiful Isabelle from whom Tony parted, whom Tony must renounce.

“Well!” said the mistress, sombre-eyed still, and with a still heaving breast.  “There was something else, Harriet—­Gently, please, Germaine, my head aches frightfully.  Oh, Harriet, will you see what this Blondin man wants with Nina?  She tells me he suggested some sort of summer party in his roof garden; I don’t know quite what it is.  But her heart is set on it.  They seem to understand each other—­I always felt that when Nina’s affairs did begin, she would pick out freaks like this!  But,” Nina’s mother sighed, resignedly, “that’s all right.  He’s interesting, and everyone’s after him, and if it pleases her—!  And will you go to the Hawkes’ for her in the morning?  Hansen is going at—­I don’t know what time, in the big car.  Don’t—­” Germaine had gone to the bathroom for a hot towel, and Isabelle dropped her voice, almost affectionately—­“don’t worry about this little scene, Harriet.  It will be quite all right!”

“Oh, surely!” The companion’s voice was light and cheerful; she went upstairs only pleasantly excited and thrilled.  And at the breakfast table next morning Harriet could show the head of the house the same bright assurance.  She was young.  Life was like a fascinating play.  Richard had come downstairs early, and they had their coffee alone.

“Nina?” asked her father.

“She comes back to-day,” Harriet said.  “Mrs. Carter is going to have her masseuse, so she won’t be down.  She asked you to remember that you are dining at the Jays’ to-morrow.  There’s to be tennis at about four.”

“Finals,” he said, nodding.  “Jim Kelsoe and one of the Irvins—­”

“Judson Irwin,” the girl supplied.

“Was it?” Richard Carter went out to his car apparently well pleased with himself and his life.  Harriet started for the Hawkes’ with a philosophic reflection or two as to the ephemeral quality of married quarrels.

She brought Nina back at noon, a garrulous and complacent Nina, who could pity the elder Hawkes as girls who “never had admirers.”  When they reached the driveway of Crownlands, Harriet recognized the car that was already there, and said to herself that Anthony Pope would join them for luncheon.  But just as she and Nina were about to enter the cool, wide, dark doorway, Anthony himself passed them.  He was almost running, and apparently did not see them.  He ran down the shallow steps and sprang into his car, which scattered a spray of gravel as he jerked it madly about, and was gone before she and Nina had ended their look of surprise.  Harriet detected a magnificent astonishment in Bottomley’s mild elderly glance as well; she went slowly upstairs, with a dim foreboding far back in her heart.