The week that followed was an anxious one. David's physical condition
slowly improved. The slight thickness was gone from his speech, and he
sipped resignedly at the broths Lucy or the nurse brought at regular
intervals. Over the entire house there hung all day the odor of stewing
chicken or of beef tea in the making, and above the doorbell was a white
card which said: "Don't ring. Walk in."

As it happened, no one in the old house had seen Maggie Donaldson's
confession in the newspaper. Lucy was saved that anxiety, at least.
Appearing, as it did, the morning after David's stroke, it came in with
the morning milk, lay about unnoticed, and passed out again, to start
a fire or line a pantry shelf. Harrison Miller, next door, read it over
his coffee. Walter Wheeler in the eight-thirty train glanced at it and
glanced away. Nina Ward read it in bed. And that was all.

There came to the house a steady procession of inquirers and bearers
of small tribute, flowers and jellies mostly, but other things also.
A table in David's room held a steadily growing number of bedroom
slippers, and Mrs. Morgan had been seen buying soles for still others.
David, propped up in his bed, would cheer a little at these votive
offerings, and then relapse again into the heavy troubled silence that
worried Dick and frightened Lucy Crosby. Something had happened, she was
sure. Something connected with Dick. She watched David when Dick was
in the room, and she saw that his eyes followed the younger man with
something very like terror.