Mrs. Hereford was a true musician, and her husband loved her talent. When she came to Waybrook after her marriage she found the beautiful music room he had created waiting for her. Hereford had copied it from a villa near Cremona in Italy. The woodwork lining the walls had been brought to this American house from a music room whose traditions were hundreds of years old. Besides modern instruments--a phonograph, a harp, and two grand pianos looking at each other from the opposite ends of the room--rare instruments hung on the walls. Before the windows leading out on the porches, fell curtains of Renaissance brocade. The room was rich in tone and full of shadow and charm. The lady of the house had seen Captain Ramsay alone in this room for the first time one evening when a guest in the smoking room beyond had been telling a ghost story. She and Captain Ramsay had played “Manon,” “Butterfly,” and Irish songs to make a thrilling accompaniment for a thrilling tale, but more sincerely to cover what Ramsay was saying to her in his young, eager voice with his young, eager feelings. As Helen Hereford now came quickly in the music room past midnight she found it was still as death and it seemed to her as nearly ominous. She walked softly over the thick rugs. The black paneling of the walls made a striking background for her figure in white evening dress. From one of the windows through which streamed October moonlight, the curtains were drawn; and the night, suggesting only beauty and peace, did not seem a proper setting for the story of a crime. During the war she had often stood in this window thinking of Jack Hereford and his friend flying over the enemy’s lines. She had looked forward with interest to seeing and knowing this brave man. How little she had imagined there would ever be a moment like this! How cruel Ralph’s need of money must have been in order to have brought him so low as this! Jack had told her that Ramsay was as poor as a rat--with never a cent in his pocket--but Ralph himself had told her more that very afternoon when she had seen in the bitterness on his face a record of his cruel life. Then he had acknowledged being a castaway and a vagabond. Had he not called himself an adventurer? The fact that he had rushed out of the house was against him. She did not believe that he would come here, and if he did not, she would keep his miserable secret as she would keep secret his kisses which she could not efface. At the sound of steps on the veranda she went hurriedly to the window to open it herself. As she turned the handle of the French window, Ramsay came in, dressed just as he was when he had gone out that morning to fetch the grapes, in white flannel and white shoes. Her first expression was maternal as she saw him. “You will catch a terrible cold. You must be frightfully cold! I am going to fetch you something to drink. There is whisky in the smoking room.”