I
Mrs. Ascott had an early appointment with her attorney. An early
appointment necessitated her catching the nine-fifteen train for the
city. That, again, implied the disruption of the entire household
regimen, and Judith Ascott had learned not to try her mother’s patience
too far. She was the unpleasant note in an otherwise satisfactory
family. True, her mother had stood by her through all the scandal
and unpleasantness. But the changing of the breakfast hour was quite
another matter.
As she slipped into the pantry of the big suburban home and set the
coffee machine going, she turned over in her mind another reason for
her care not to disturb the family slumber. She did not know why her
attorney wished to see her--was not even sure which member of the firm
would be awaiting her, that still March morning. The long-distance
message conveyed the bare information that the business was urgent.
Might there be another delay in the divorce? She had been assured that
the decree would be in her hands by the end of the week; but gruff old
Sanderson, the senior partner, was not so sure. Any reference to the
“distasteful affair” threw her mother into a nervous chill. A note on
the breakfast table, informing the family that she had caught the early
express for a morning at the art gallery, would suffice as well as any
other explanation.
All the way in, between the snow-decked New York fields and the dreary
waste of the Sound, she dwelt moodily on the unpleasant possibilities
of the coming interview. But when she emerged from the confusion of the
Grand Central station, already in the turmoil of reconstruction, she
thought only of the relative merits of the taxicab and the subway. She
had schooled herself, in times of stress, to take refuge in irrelevant
trifles. She had learned, too, that the more she worried before the
ordeal the less occasion she found for worry when the actual conditions
confronted her. In view of her sleepless night, she would probably find
roses and Griff Ramsay instead of thorns and Donald Sanderson.