Dan returned to the Hotel Button and went up to his rooms. He sat at his desk, scribbling on a bit of paper. Then he took a fresh sheet and wrote: “Dear Thurley”—but nothing else suggested itself. “She wouldn’t give a hoot, you poor fool,” he told himself. Finally he tore the paper up and whistling with utmost cheeriness tramped about the room and tried to take an interest in planning the decorations of the twenty-thousand-dollar house. It was Thurley’s house no matter what all the ministers and marriage licenses might try to prove to the contrary. CHAPTER XIX Ernestine returned in June nervously overwrought and almost petulant at having to wait for her sailing reservations. Thurley saw a new sort of Ernestine Christian, prophetic hint as to her own future if she continued with her work. “Don’t speak to me until we’ve been out at sea for a day,” Ernestine commanded, “then I’ll be a lovely, rosy _thing_, the jolliest big sister ever, and I’ll play the rest of the summer. Ask Collin—he knows. Collin, Bliss and I have often crossed together, and when we went aboard the boys seriously considered asking the steward not to place us at the same table. By the time we reached Havre they were making violent love to me, wondering if their own eyes had played them false in the beginning of the trip,” after which she unceremoniously bundled Thurley out of her apartment. Thurley accepted the hint, as she had plenty to do in getting Miss Clergy’s summer wardrobe completed and accompanying her to a rustic lodge in the Adirondacks where she would drone away the golden summer as she wished. Thurley had assumed, perforce, a maternal attitude towards Miss Clergy; she was even dictatorial and bullied her a trifle about being nice to other elderly persons who invited Miss Clergy for tea—Thurley had found this demeanor to have excellent results. Although it was with relief that she left the ghost-lady at her summer’s boarding-place, it was with regret as well. Thurley had begun to feel that Miss Clergy “belonged” to her as she had always tried to fancy some one somewhere must belong to her if she would only be patient long enough. “I sha’n’t worry about you,” Miss Clergy had told her. “You’re the most satisfactory thing I ever owned.” Unconsciously she had spoken the truth. She did regard Thurley as a beautiful, talented sort of unsexed person dependent upon her for existence. Unselfish affection never entered the partnership. She wondered why Thurley had turned away so abruptly as she spoke and pretended she had an errand outside the room.