"I'm quite contented just now with my work, Owen," she rebuked. "It is everything to me, you know."
At that, his tone changed.
"You're right, I know," he said, with what I interpreted as a touch of bitterness. "You are the most self-sufficient woman I ever knew, Portia. All you have to do is to shut yourself away from the rest of humanity in your gray prison, and you're quite happy. No intruding friends for you, eh?"
Then turning to me: "I know it's only a matter of three blocks across the fields, from here, but it's hard walking on the frozen ground. If you get in, Portia will have to," he insinuated, with an appealing and boyish smile.
I liked him at once, so I got into the automobile, and of course Portia had to follow me. As Owen Edwardes backed the car around, my niece touched my arm and motioned with her head to a woman who, accompanied by two little girls rather strikingly dressed in bright red like twins, was walking toward us about a block away.
"That's Mr. Differdale's sister and her children," murmured my niece. "Thanks to you, Aunt Sophie, I'm now giving Aurora Arnold something to gossip about."
I promptly said "Fiddlesticks!" Really, I didn't care. I had taken a strong liking to young Owen Edwardes at first sight, and if he showed himself interested in Portia, I didn't intend to put obstacles in the way of his courtship of a charming young widow, in spite of what the neighbors might say.
Mr. Edwardes asked Portia if there were anything he could do for her, before he went. He offered to go to the Center Station for my trunk and bag, instead of leaving them to come over by express. Of course, I refused his offer, but I told myself that unless he were interested in Portia he wouldn't have offered to go so much out of the way for me.
Portia pressed a bell button inserted in the deep wall beside the heavy bronze door that presently swung open before her key, the bell being to notify Fu Sing that she had returned, so that he could regulate the hour for serving dinner accordingly. For a moment I had a feeling of panic when I heard that great door clang shut behind me. I remembered all at once that in this enclosure some mysterious work was carried on: that somewhere here, inside those unsurmountable walls, Howard Differdale had dropped dead under Portia's very eves, almost at her side. I couldn't help shuddering.
The next moment Portia had thrown her arms around my neck and her warm kiss fell upon my cheek.
"Welcome home, dearest Aunt Sophie!" she was crying.
Her words, her voice, her kiss, swept unpleasant associations out of my mind, and I followed her cheerfully enough across the wide courtyard to the massive granite building that was to be my home in future. The house door was opened to us by the bowing, smiling Fu Sing, sucking in his breath in excruciatingly polite manner as he retreated before us.
Portia took me at once to my room on the second floor. It was wonderfully attractive, except that it had no bed, only a pile of silken cushions. She asked me if I wanted to try the cushions, or if she should telephone into Lynbrook for a regulation bed. It happens that I really do like to try new things, so I vetoed her suggestion at once; I thought I might enjoy playing that I was in some kind of Eastern palace.
At dinner, which was served in a handsome, entirely modern dining room that opened off the kitchen through a butler's pantry, Portia tried to give me a brief resumé of the
