Lita was turning over some impersonal looking bills and advertisements. From beneath them the faithful gray-blue envelope emerged. Nona thought: "If only he wouldn't--!" and her eyes filled. Lita looked pensively at the post-mark and then laid the envelope down unopened. "Aren't you going to read your letter?" She raised her brows. "Jim's? I did--yesterday. One just like it." "Lita! You're--you're perfectly beastly!" Lita's languid mouth rounded into a smile. "Not to you, darling. Do you want me to read it?" She slipped a polished finger-tip under the flap. "Oh, no; no! Don't--not like that!" It made Nona wince. "I wish she _hated_ Jim--I wish she wanted to kill him! I could bear it better than this," the girl stormed inwardly. She got up and turned toward the door. "Nona--wait! What's the matter? Don't you really want to hear what he says?" Lita stood up also, her eyes still on the open letter. "He--oh..." She turned toward her sister-in-law a face from which the inner glow had vanished. "What is it? Is he ill? What's wrong?" "He's coming home. He wants me to go back the day after tomorrow." She stood staring in front of her, her eyes fixed on something invisible to Nona, and beyond her. "Does he say why?" "He doesn't say anything but that." "When did you expect him?" "I don't know. Not for ages. I never can remember about dates. But I thought he liked it down there. And your father said he'd arranged--" "Arranged what?" Nona interrupted. Lita seemed to become aware of her again, and turned on her a smooth inaccessible face. "I don't know: arranged with the bank, I suppose." "To keep him there?" "To let him have a good long holiday. You all thought he needed it so awfully, didn't you?" Nona stood motionless, staring out of the window. She saw her father drive up in the Buick. The rain had diminished to a silver drizzle shot with bursts of sun, and through the open window she heard him call: "It's going to clear after all. We'd better start." Lita went out of the door, humming a tune. "Lita!" Nona called out, moved by some impulse to arrest, to warn--she didn't know what. But the door had closed, and Lita was already out of hearing. All through the day it kept on raining at uncomfortable intervals. Uncomfortable, that is, for Pauline and Nona. Whenever they tried to get out for a walk a deluge descended; then, as soon as they had splashed back to the house with the dripping dogs, the clouds broke and mocked them with a blaze of sunshine. But by that time they were either revising the list again, or had settled down to Mah-jongg in the library. "Really, I can't go up and change into my walking shoes _again_!" Pauline remonstrated to the weather; and a few minutes later the streaming window-panes had justified her. "April showers," she remarked with a slightly rigid smile. She looked deprecatingly at her daughter. "It was selfish of me to keep you here, dear. You ought to have gone with your father and Lita."