This was the time of day Violet liked best. She wore black velvet, a high choker of pearls, and had a moment always of narcissistic pleasure when she was putting perfume behind her ears, for the high candles on the dressing table softened the lines, and just before dinner each evening she knew again that she had been beautiful. She heard Sally stumble on the landing and went out to meet her.

“How is your knee, Sally? Does it hurt?” she asked solicitously, putting a tentative hand on the stiff rather soldierly shoulder in its red jacket.

“I haven’t thought”—Sally turned, frowning. “It does hurt, I guess,” she added vaguely. She had not stumbled because her knee hurt, but because emerging into this wide landing had startled her after the dark staircase.

“You must stay in bed tomorrow morning and have a long good rest. Only Charles goes down for breakfast.”

“Oh, I always get up,” Sally said definitely, the rebuff intentional. With this they arrived at the library through the back door.

“Darling, how lovely to have a drink!” Violet curled up in the armchair, looking up at her husband with a radiant smile. Sally observed this. She did not want to be loved by these people, nor to love them, but the knowledge that she must not made her feel queerly sad.

“Well, funny little face”—Charles turned from the table in the corner where he was mixing drinks—“What are you allowed to have? A martini?”

“Yes, please, Uncle Charles.”

In spite of herself, Sally was aware that her Aunt Violet looked rather beautiful, in a disturbing slightly elderly way which suggested a knowledge of life and a security which she envied. Would Ian think she was beautiful, she wondered? Or would he say, as she had heard him once about a fashionable woman who sent him an orchid, “That old bag!”

“A penny for your thoughts,” Charles said teasingly as he handed her a glass.

“Ian,” she said simply. “It’s always Ian when someone want to know my thoughts.”

Charles and Violet exchanged a look. Should they ignore this or press it Further? It was Violet who said quietly,

“Your Ian must be a great charmer.”

“Women fall for him, of course,” Sally said with possessive contempt. “In a way, it’s part of his job.”

“Yes, I see,” said Violet. “That must be rather a bore for you sometimes.”

“Oh no.” The candor was disarming. “They’re his trophies, like silver cups if he were an athlete. He brings them all to me.”

“But after all,” Charles was unaware that what he felt was jealousy, “this fellow’s nothing but an actor, what? You’re not serious, Sally?”

“Charles—” Violet warned, but it was too late.

“You sound like my mother, Uncle Charles,” Sally was carefully condescending. She drank her martini down at one gulp. She was dead sober now, watchful as a mother cat protecting her kittens. She was going to win the first round, she must. “I suppose”—she turned now to her aunt—“that Mother told you we are engaged.”

“Yes,” Violet lied, “I think she said something of the sort.” Actually what Barbie had written was that Sally would tell them she was engaged, but that Ian had no intention of marrying her and had told Barbie so himself. For a second Violet wondered if her sister were telling the truth. “But you’ll finish college before you get married, surely?”

“I suppose so. That’s the bargain I’ve made with Mother. Daddy has washed his hands of the whole business, thank God,” Sally said and laughed a short, not very happy laugh. “By the way, I don’t suppose there were any letters for me?”

“You’ve only been gone twenty-four hours, you know,” Charles teased.

“It seems like a year.” With this, said very quietly, Sally looked once around the room, at the great shelves of books mounting to the ceiling, at the closed cabinet along one side with its fine bindings, at the long windows and the firelight flaming through them. She shivered.

Violet saw the shiver. “You must be very tired.” Sally felt the net of tenderness falling down over her like a spell. From the moment she had fallen down on the front steps, she had known there was a spell here, and she would have to fight like mad not to be caught in it.

“Mostly,” she said with something like violence, “I’m mad.”

Charles chuckled. Violet informed him that in America “mad” means “angry.” Then he chuckled even more.

“A little angry thing has come to stay,” he said happily. “A little mad thing too, perhaps?”

But Sally said nothing. She would not look at them. She would remain intact.

“Does the little mad thing play golf?” he persisted. It seemed, as they went in to dinner, that she did. But Sally felt so diminished sitting beneath the high wall entirely filled with family portraits, that she ate the whole meal in silence. Charles and Violet, having by tacit agreement given up trying to draw her out, flirted across the long table. Sally observed this. It was quite unlike the behavior of her own parents who took each other for granted. She found that she was becoming curious, perhaps even slightly entranced by this marriage she was to contemplate for two months, by this pair between whom she sat, not quite a stranger.