A farm dog appeared and going up to Clara licked her hand. She went around the house and stood back of a bush in the darkness near where the carriages were being loaded. Her father with Steve Hunter and his wife came and got into a carriage. Tom was in an expansive, generous mood. “You know, Steve, I told you and several others my Clara was engaged to Alfred Buckley,” he said. “Well, I was mistaken. The whole thing was a lie. The truth is I shot off my mouth without talking to Clara. I had seen them together and now and then Buckley used to come out here to the house in the evening, although he never came except when I was here. He told me Clara had promised to marry him, and like a fool I took his word. I never even asked. That's the kind of a fool I was and I was a bigger fool to go telling the story. All the time Clara and Hugh were engaged and I never suspected. They told me about it to-night.” Clara stood by the bush until she thought the last of the guests had gone. The lie her father had told seemed only a part of the evening's vulgarity. Near the kitchen door the waitresses, cooks and musicians were being loaded into the bus that had been driven out from the Bidwell House. She went into the dining-room. Sadness had taken the place of the anger in her, but when she saw Hugh the anger came back. Piles of dishes filled with food lay all about the room and the air was heavy with the smell of food. Hugh stood by a window looking out into the dark farmyard. He held his hat in his hand. “You might put your hat away,” she said sharply. “Have you forgotten you're married to me and that you now live here in this house?” She laughed nervously and walked to the kitchen door. Her mind still clung to the past and to the days when she was a child and had spent so many hours in the big, silent kitchen. Something was about to happen that would take her past away--destroy it, and the thought frightened her. “I have not been very happy in this house but there have been certain moments, certain feelings I've had,” she thought. Stepping through the doorway she stood for a moment in the kitchen with her back to the wall and with her eyes closed. Through her mind went a troop of figures, the stout determined figure of Kate Chanceller who had known how to love in silence; the wavering, hurrying figure of her mother; her father as a young man coming in after a long drive to warm his hands by the kitchen fire; a strong, hard-faced woman from town who had once worked for Tom as cook and who was reported to have been the mother of two illegitimate children; and the figures of her childhood fancy walking over the bridge toward her, clad in beautiful raiment.