aken much
time. "Just to make sure how things stand," he had laughed and she had
been only too eager to acquiesce. Then there was the business of
making out the notes. Six months and one year they had been, ample
time enough on considering the progress of the business. Of course it
could have all been finished up in one session. But somehow it was a
week or more before everything was entirely settled. She had taken a
small apartment, in reality just a room and a bath, in a quiet family
hotel-apartment that Claybrook had recommended. He had, of course,
come in to see how she was installed. It was a dim, cool, hushed sort
of place, where guests spoke in sibilant whispers when they crossed
the parlour lobby. There was a faded blonde of doubtful age presiding
over the tiny desk, who handed out mail and plugged in telephone calls
in a small switchboard and kept the hotel porter in a constant state
of agitated unrest. No one ever sat around in the lobby. Every now
and then there would gather little groups of prim old ladies with
shawls and magazines and embroidery frames, discussing whispered
personalities and the weather, as they waited for the elevator.
Careful, curious looks they always had for Mary Louise whenever she
came upon them. An all-pervading atmosphere of stealth and secrecy and
propriety seemed to hover about the place. Before she had been an
inmate three hours she felt it and when Claybrook called that first
evening, she had come rushing across the lobby to meet him, with a
glad little cry of welcome. Immediately one of the little groups had
ceased to function and had with one accord stared at her with grave
eyes, and the blonde at the switchboard had lifted her head above the
edge of the desk and peered over. And then in the lobby, over in a far
corner, they had sat uncomfortably for an hour on the faded plush
divan and discussed commonplaces in a low tone and felt irreparably
guilty.

But in spite of it all, Claybrook had come again; had come the next
evening and the next. Most of the time he took her out for drives in
his car. It began to be a regular thing, and she had come to look
forward to his coming. The idea of staying alone in that whispery
place was not a pleasant idea. Moreover, now that Maida was gone, she
had double work to do in the tea room--which was running on as briskly
as ever--and in the evening she felt invariably jaded and in need of
some sort of diversion. So she welcomed Claybrook. And