As a result of that visit Harrison Miller and Bassett went that night to Chicago. They left it to Doctor Reynolds' medical judgment whether David should be told or not, and Reynolds himself did not know. In the end he passed the shuttle the next evening to Clare Rossiter. “Something's troubling you,” she said. “You're not a bit like yourself, old dear.” He looked at her. To him she was all that was fine and good and sane of judgment. “I've got something to settle,” he said. “I was wondering while you were singing, dear, whether you could help me out.” “When I sing you're supposed to listen. Well? What is it?” She perched herself on the arm of his chair, and ran her fingers over his hair. She was very fond of him, and she meant to be a good wife. If she ever thought of Dick Livingstone now it was in connection with her own reckless confession to Elizabeth. She had hated Elizabeth ever since. “I'll take a hypothetical case. If you guess, you needn't say. Of course it's a great secret.” She listened, nodding now and then. He used no names, and he said nothing of any crime. “The point is this,” he finished. “Is it better to believe the man is dead, or to know that he is alive, but has cut himself off?” “There's no mistake about the recognition?” “Somebody from the village saw him in Chicago within day or two, and talked to him.” She had the whole picture in a moment. She knew that Mrs. Sayre had been in Chicago, that she had seen Dick there and talked to him. She turned the matter over in her mind, shrewdly calculating, planning her small revenge on Elizabeth even as she talked. “I'd wait,” she advised him. “He may come back with them, and in that case David will know soon enough. Or he may refuse to, and that would kill him. He'd rather think him dead than that.” She slept quietly that night, and spent rather more time than usual in dressing that morning. Then she took her way to the Wheeler house. She saw in what she was doing no particularly culpable thing. She had no great revenge in mind; all that she intended was an evening of the score between them. “He preferred you to me, when you knew I cared. But he has deserted you.” And perhaps, too, a small present jealousy, for she was to live in the old brick Livingstone house, or in one like it, while all the village expected ultimately to see Elizabeth installed in the house on the hill. She kept her message to the end of her visit, and delivered her blow standing. “I have something I ought to tell you, Elizabeth. But I don't know how you'll take it.” “Maybe it's something I won't want to hear.” “I'll tell you, if you won't say where you heard it.” But Elizabeth made a small, impatient gesture. “I don't like secrets, Clare. I can't keep them, for one thing. You'd better not tell me.” Clare was nearly balked of her revenge, but not entirely.