“I wish I’d gone to Washington with Dorothy,” she muttered, snuggling down under the warm folds of a carriage robe she had brought from the coat closet. “I could have stood their chatter better than—” Her thoughts supplied the name her lips did not utter, and Mrs. Porter, gliding noiselessly into the library, never dreamed that Beverly Thorne’s domineering personality was keeping her beautiful nurse from peaceful slumber.
Mrs. Porter, her hands full of papers, went directly to the fireplace. Poking the embers into a feeble blaze, she squatted down on a footstool and placed the letters she carried one by one into the flames. Vera, lying with eyes closed, and buried in her own thoughts, did not become aware of her presence until the clang of a fire iron which Mrs. Porter inadvertently let slip aroused her. A certain furtiveness in Mrs. Porter’s movements checked Vera’s impulse to address her, and she watched her employer in a growing quandary. Should she let Mrs. Porter know that she was not alone in the room, or was she already aware of her, Vera’s, presence? It was highly probable that the latter was the case, as Mrs. Porter had to pass near the lounge to get to the fireplace, and Vera resolutely closed her eyes and did her best to drop off to sleep.
Mrs. Porter, with painstaking care, opened each letter and scanned it intently before depositing it in the fire. Her features looked pinched and worn in the ruddy glow from the burning paper. She faltered as her busy fingers came at last to a handful of twisted papers, and it took her some moments to smooth out the torn sheets and place each separately on the red-hot embers. The last sheet followed its predecessor before the first had been quite consumed, and Mrs. Porter shuddered as the sheet, like some tortured body, twisted about, then stiffened, and the words it bore showed in bold relief:
Tuesday morning—Saw Alan. God help us both.
A flame shot upward across the sheet, and the scorching trail left no record in the ashes on the hearth.
Mrs. Porter poked among the embers until convinced that each scrap of paper had been burned, then rising stiffly she gazed uneasily about the library, letting her eyes finally rest on Vera. She studied the girl’s perfect profile with appraising keenness before seating herself in front of the center table and picking up her pen. But the words she sought to put on paper would not come, and she threw down her pen with a pettish exclamation; the continued silence in the room was getting on her nerves.
“Vera!” she called shrilly. “Wake up.”
Even before she had finished speaking Vera was on her feet, and a second more was standing by the older woman’s side, laying a soothing hand on her trembling fingers.
“What is it, Mrs. Porter?” she asked. “What can I do for you?”
“Talk to me.” Mrs. Porter patted the chair next to hers and Vera sank into it. “I must have some diversion or I shall go mad!” And the gleam in her eyes lent color to her words. “Gossip with me.”