Thereafter they all behaved as if they had separated yesterday and nothing was more natural than to find themselves together again. Amelia, with bitterness in her heart, accepted the room she again longed to repudiate, and Nan, with a lifted eyebrow at Raven, as if wondering whether she'd really better be as daring as he indicated, followed Charlotte up the stairs. At supper they talked decorously of the state of the nation, which Raven frankly conceived of as going to the dogs, and Amelia upheld, from an optimism which assumed Raven to be amenable to only the most hopeful of atmospheres. After supper, when they hesitated before the library door, Nan said quite openly, as one who has decided that only the straight course will do:
"Rookie, could I see you a minute? In the dining-room?" She took in Amelia with her frank smile. "Please, Mrs. Powell! It's business."
"Certainly," Amelia said, rather stiffly. "Come, Dick. We'll keep up the fire."
They had evidently, she and Dick, resolved, though independently of each other, to behave their best, and Dick, in excess of social virtue, shut the library door, so that no wisp of talk would float that way and settle on them. Nan confronted Raven with gayest eyes.
"Did you ever!" she said, recurring to the Charlottian form of comment. "At the last minute, if you please, when I was taking the train. There she was behind me. We talked all the way, 'stiddy stream' (Charlotte!) and not a thing you could put your finger on. Did he send for her?"
"I rather think so," said Raven, giving Dick every possible advantage. Then, rallied by her smiling eyes, "Well, yes, of course he did. Don't look at me like that. I have to turn myself inside out, you she-tyrant!"
"Does Dick know?" she hastened to ask. "About Tira?"
"Yes."
"Know what I'm here for?"
"Yes."