Calling on Thurley a week after the garden fête to urge her appearance at a Newport carnival, Caleb was amazed to find her apartment shrouded in gray linen and even the mirrors tied with gauze. Hortense, in the pleasant rôle of a stay-behind martyr, received him to tell the news. Thurley had returned to Birge’s Corners—the Fincherie was the name of Miss Clergy’s house—to spend the summer! “All at once she demanded the old environment, a strange homesickness engulfed her,” Hortense began analytically, delighted to have Caleb at her mercy. “I cannot say whether or not it is wise—but home she has gone. Although she left plenty to do,” she could not refrain from adding, “but, even so, it will be lonesome for me.” At which Caleb fled, threatening punishment to Thurley for having run him into danger. Later, he received a note stating that Thurley was at the Fincherie and she would have a house party in August, to save the time out for that because she was sure he would find plenty of new types. “I’ll be hanged,” Caleb ruminated over the situation before he wrote Ernestine the news. “But didn’t Thurley leave a boy-sweetheart in Birge’s Corners?” CHAPTER XXVI The reopening of the Fincherie with magical haste, untold extravagance and new notions set the town gossiping anew. To see every window wide open and Betsey and Hopeful polishing them while Ali Baba hurried to and fro on all sorts of errands bent, to know that the stable was empty of its coupé and motor cars were installed, while a pert maid with a cap with streamers minced down the streets and smiled superciliously at every one—it was enough to give the Corners palpitation of the heart. The general verdict was that Thurley had returned “to lord it over every one.” A few more romantically inclined thought she had come back to “win Dan from ’Raine.” One or two simple souls believed she might be genuinely anxious to be at home again, at least the only home she had ever known. Thurley bothered little with public opinion. With false assurance as to her ideas, she proceeded to put them into practice without delay. The devil always favoring a new recruit, it would seem, she met with considerable success. To still the wondering as to Bliss’s summers, the loneliness for a personal relationship and the fag in her head brought about by a season’s hard work and the war agitation, Thurley played along in Lissa’s own manner. She treated the Corners with good-natured disdain. There was a trifle of the boaster in her as she wore her new creations and drove her smart cab about, smoked openly and permitted unwrapped cases of champagne to be sent up from the station. But the boasting was because of two elements, the child’s love of mischief and the woman’s loneliness and determination to let no one suspect that she had repented of her strange bargain.