The evening sun hovered over the tops of the trees. Its orange shafts struck through the dark woods, harrying the coach as it swayed along, gleaming on its brass fittings and the cracked blue paint on its sides. The sun's rays were still bright but they had lost their heat. A damp coolness seemed to seep from the encroaching trees and undergrowth, and the muddy water, thrown up as the wheels jolted through the potholes in the road, had a chill, dank smell.

The driver on the box resettled his hat, pulling the brim lower to shield his eyes, and then he took up his blacksnake whip and sent it cracking over the horses' heads as he yelled curses at the leaders. The coach picked up speed.

At the windows the dirty brown leather curtains bellied and slapped, doing little to stop the muddy water that spattered in and trickled down the sides. The doors rattled loosely in their frames and the body creaked as it swung on its straps, while above the rumbling of the wheels and the pounding of the horses' hooves the bumping of a loose trunk could be heard.

The man on the forward seat, a merchant judging from his false shirt front, old fashioned stock, and self-satisfied air, threw back his head and glared upward.

Beside him his wife misunderstood. "That man will kill us all," she said, with an accusing look at the girl on the opposite seat. "I'm surprised we haven't overturned a dozen times already!" The woman's eyes were protuberant and her mouth colorless. The grayish brown hair skewered in a knot on top of her head was pulled too tight, dragging her heavy brows upward in a look of constant surprise.

"Sounds like we be about to lose that lot of gee-gaws I've got overhead. Happen I'll have to charge somebody with 'em, if they turn up missing." The merchant eyed the girl also. When she made no answer he pushed the window curtain aside with one long finger, and holding back his chin whiskers, let fly a stream of tobacco juice. It was a comment.

Two small tow-headed boys, their hair like cropped white silk, sat on the middle seat, a plain wooden board. With their arms hooked over the wide leather strap that served as a back rest, they turned guileless blue eyes on the girl to see if she had taken their father's point.

If she had, Mary Elizabeth Brewster gave no indication. Her deep green eyes were fixed on a point above the heads of the merchant and his wife while she drew the strings of her black reticule through her fingers. She had no liking for the merchant and his wife, but after forty long miles spent that day in their company she could understand their annoyance. Not only were they riding with their backs to the horses, but they were being taken some fourteen miles out of their way. It could not be helped. Callie could not be the one to ride backward, because she turned queasy riding backward. As for the detour, that was the chance they took when they boarded public transportation.

Above them the driver swung his whip in a series of sharp reports. Elizabeth lifted a speculative glance. Perhaps a silver dollar had been too much to offer the man on the box for this side trip. It had been Mexican to be sure, but coins were so scarce these days. She appreciated his efforts to get a little more speed out of the lumbering old coach, although it was anybody's guess whether it was the thought of making up his schedule which drove him, or, as was more likely, the thought of the drunk possible on his windfall, with whiskey at a quarter per gallon.

It doesn't matter, she told herself fiercely. What mattered was that she and Callie and the baby got to Oak Shade with as little delay as possible.

Beside her, Callie, her name the inevitable shortening from Calliope, the muse of the soft voice, sat as stolid and immovable as a mountain. In her ample lap the baby slept. When Elizabeth looked down at him, her mouth curved unconsciously into a smile. Such a good baby. Their nine days on this bone-wracking trip over a part of Texas and most of Louisiana would have been very different if he had not been a good traveler. As it was, it had been an endurance test. For the first three or four days they had felt bruised and battered as if they had been beaten. But for the last five they had been so mindlessly weary that they had almost ceased to feel; almost, but not quite. The muscles in Elizabeth's arms ached from holding the baby mile after mile, spelling Callie. Though she never complained, the Negro nurse must be even more tired. On her shoulders had fallen the main burden of caring for little Joseph, not only in the coach but in the primitive taverns and sleazy inns that had provided overnight accommodation. Callie was good with babies as well as being a wonderful wet nurse. The stillborn deaths of six of her own babies, the last only two weeks before Joseph's birth, had given her a need and a love for the feel of a child in her arms.

Soberly Elizabeth pleated the black bombazine of her dress without really seeing the nervous reaction of her fingers. Even in repose, however, the pale oval of her face did not lose the look of determination about the mouth and chin that had unconsciously alienated the merchant and his wife. Her emerald eyes, heavily lashed beneath dark arched brows, gave no hint of her inner conflict.

Without Callie, Elizabeth thought, this journey, this masquerade would never have been undertaken. For a moment the thought of what she intended to do sent a shudder of dread over her. Her reasons for what she was doing, so carefully thought out, so important, had fled, and she was left with the feeling that she was being incredibly foolhardy, that she would be found out in the first minutes of meeting the family at Oak Shade. Turn back, a part of her mind cried, and she had to clench her jaws together to keep from giving the order.

Then beside her the baby, Joseph, stirred, waving a plump fist in the air. He smiled in his sleep. Her doubts fell away. No, the consequences of not going through with this masquerade were too great. Besides, it was too late to turn back now. It had been too late from the day she had placed a wooden marker on the fresh grave which lay beneath a cottonwood tree by a rambling log house in Texas. A marker bearing her own name.

Strangely, the thought of the marker gave her a feeling of relief. She had made her choice weeks before. There could be no turning back. All that was needed was a little resolution. There was so much to be gained and so little to lose.

She let her eyes rest for a moment on the merchant and his wife and children. Their bright examining eyes had evaluated her from the gold band on her left hand to the mourning brooch made of hair at her throat, from the black high-button shoes peeping from beneath her skirts to the bright auburn hair drawn back in a knot at the nape of her neck and covered by her semi-transparent mourning veil. She had deceived them. It could be done again.

A mirthless smile touched her generous mouth. How shocked they would be if they knew that, despite her widow's weeds and the baby in the arms of his Negro nurse, she had never had a husband, never been a mother, and from this day would answer to a dead woman's name.

"Whoa, whoa!"

The shout was followed by the grinding of brakes. The coach began to slow and finally came to a lurching stop.

"What can it be?" The merchant's wife clutched her husband's arm.

He shook her off and twitched the leather curtain aside.

"Some fancy landau seems to have blocked the road. Nabob's rig, no doubt. Got a black in livery at the ribbons."

Outside, the servant in the carriage could be heard asking for a Madame Delacroix. With a start Elizabeth realized he meant her, but she made no move to alight and sternly repressed an impulse to lean across and peep out around the slack curtain. In a moment the driver climbed down and pulled open the door.

"Mrs. Delacroix, ma'am, this feller says he has orders to carry y'all the rest of the way."

"Thank you," Elizabeth replied with the quiet dignity befitting a recent widow.

Turning to Callie, she took the baby while Callie clambered out, and then gave him back into her keeping while she herself accepted the driver's hand and stepped down.

In a few minutes they had been handed into the landau and their trunks and boxes lashed on behind. With a jerk, they started off, leaving the coach behind them to the difficult business of turning on the narrow road.

Elizabeth threw the veil away from her face, drawing its long length across one shoulder to prevent it from being crushed beneath her, and then pushed her skirts into place around her feet.

"We forgot to say good-by," she told Callie, frowning.

"So did they," Callie answered without looking up from the baby who had been awakened by the move.

The landau was well sprung, and it had deeply padded seats and gray velvet upholstery. It seemed luxurious in comparison to the stage, whose hard seats and body swung on straps gave no protection from the jolts. It was an open carriage, however, and the damp dew-laden chill of the gathering dusk made Elizabeth shiver and Callie draw Joseph closer against her breasts.

But this last stage of their journey was not a long one, and soon they were turning into a long winding drive. It was lined with evergreen live oaks that acted as a dust screen, the oaks that gave the house its name. Elizabeth felt their dark shade drop over them as they swept under their arching branches up the drive. She was aware of a sudden depression, and her earlier apprehension swept back in force. The sound of the carriage was loud in the soft black stillness. Through the trees, rows of white pillars gleamed, fleeting and ethereal. Then suddenly the carriage broke from the shade, and the house, like a Grecian temple in a forest, was before them. Insubstantial in the dusky darkness, it seemed cold, distant and forbidding. A flame, like a votive candle, flickered in the wrought iron lantern hanging over the front door, but there was no other sign of life. A desolation that was near to tears closed over Elizabeth at this lack of welcome. Suppose it had been Ellen Marie arriving, gentle, easily hurt Ellen Marie, her sister whose place she was taking?

"Is there no one home?" she asked the driver sharply in an effort to cover her misgivings.

"Oh, yes'm. They home alright. I expect they at the supper table."

She waited while he wrapped the reins around the whip in its stand and climbed down to come around and hand her out of the carriage. She stepped down and waited until Callie struggled out with the sleeping baby. Then Elizabeth swept up the steps, her long black veil swirling about her knees. With one hand clutching her reticule and the other holding her skirts out of the way, she crossed the brick-floored gallery, Callie hurrying behind as though afraid to lose sight of her.

As she neared the front door, it swung wide and a white-coated Negro butler bowed low and then stepped back for her to enter. She glanced at him inquiringly but he had the impassive countenance of all good servants. In the great central hall she stopped.

The hall stretching through the center of the house was floored with polished squares of black and white marble. Against the right wall stood a massive table with a white marble top and the curved cabriole legs of a Chippendale piece. Upon it sat a silver tray for visiting cards and a heavy glass lamp. The lamp had an elaborate base of small stylized glass dragons, a dark green globe that nearly concealed the flickering flame within, and crystal lusters that tinkled faintly in the draft from the open door. Behind the table the wall was covered with an oriental wall-paper in celadon green with a pattern of drooping weeping willows and pensive, small-faced, slant-eyed maidens.

To the left rose a wide staircase with a mahogany stair rail ending at the foot of the stairs in a serpentine coil that served as a newel post. In the center of the coil was fixed a smooth ivory button, a symbol that the house was paid for, that it carried no mortgage.

Seeing her hesitation, the butler bowed again and begged her to step into the library. Though she had the curious feeling that she was being maneuvered, Elizabeth had no choice but to comply. It was only after she was in the library that it occurred to her that as member of the family she should have been shown into the front parlor, or salon as the Creoles called it, instead of this lesser room.

After holding a spill to the lamp in the hall, the butler lit several lamps for them in the library, saw that they were seated and then went away.

Minutes passed. Elizabeth and Callie were too tired to speak, and the ticking of the ormolu clock on the white Carrara marble mantle over the fireplace was loud in the silence. Callie sighed, shifted in her chair, and patted Joseph, who was hungrily trying to suck his fist. Elizabeth, got to her feet and paced, looking at the somber elegance of the room. Burgundy velvet drapes, heavily fringed with gold tassels, hung over the Swiss lace panels at the windows. A gold rug with a border of swirling green leaves covered the floor, and the walnut settee and chairs were covered with red brocatelle picked out with gold thread. The faint odor of tobacco hung on the air, coming she discovered from a humidor on one of the small tables sitting about the room. There was also a smell of leather which came from the books that lined the walls and from the large leather chair that stood behind a heavy desk that took up the far end of the long room. The two smells combined to give an impression of masculinity to the room.

Abruptly the door swung open and the butler stood back to allow a man to enter. Elizabeth turned to face him and made a move to step forward then checked herself. No, let him come to her, she thought. It would not do to appear too eager. But as the man came toward her she found herself wondering if it would not have been easier to go to him than to sustain that dark and searching regard.

A black armband was fastened over the sleeve of his deep gray frock coat. Beneath the coat he wore a black embroidered waistcoat with fawn pantaloons. Onyx shirt studs gleamed against the white of his pleated and tucked shirt front and at his collar a pure white cravat contrasted with the deep sun bronze of his face. His dark hair was brushed back severely over his ears, and the fine curl threatening to fall from the brush pattern lent no note of softness to the black gaze of his eyes.

"You will be my brother's wife. I bid you welcome to Oak Shade," he said with a slight bow.

As she gave him her hand he carried it to his lips. The action was so unexpected that Elizabeth flinched, and then tried to recover the slip by smiling quickly and thanking him. But he had not overlooked her reaction, and an added stiffness came into his manner.

"And you must be Bernard," she said brightly, trying to overcome her nervousness. "Felix spoke of you often. I must thank you for sending the carriage to meet us."

"Not at all. I am told my driver could not bring you the entire distance from town. I am sorry. It was most remiss of him, especially since he has met every coach from the north for the past three days. I would not want you to find our hospitality lacking."

"It was my fault. I had the driver bypass the town to come straight here. It seemed best. I didn't realize that you would send the carriage for us since I didn't, in my letter, give you any real idea of when we would be arriving. I had no very real idea myself."

"In the future you will find it best perhaps to leave such arrangements in my hands."

"I'm -- sure I shall," Elizabeth murmured, noting his obvious disapproval of what she had done, but resolving to maintain her independence. Something about his manner set her teeth on edge, and she found her smile fading until they were staring at each other in near hostility. There was an exactness about him that she did not like, from the precise folds of his cravat and the perfect set of his coat across the shoulders, to the trim of his fashionably long sideburns. There was a chiseled appearance to the planes of his face, in the high cheek bones, firm chin, and the contours of his mouth. Thick black brows divided by two parallel grooves, as of constant anger or irritation, gave him a forbidding look. There had been a faint French accent in his speech that might have been attractive if his voice had not been so cold. The only thing about him that she could approve was that he was clean shaven, though this was a mark of a strong, near arrogant, self-confidence in a hirsute decade.

Callie sighed heavily again, and for the first time, Bernard Delacroix seemed to notice the Negro woman and the fretting baby she held. He stared at Joseph for a long moment, so long that Elizabeth said, "The child is tired and hungry, that is all."

He brought his gaze back to her face. "Yes, of course. You must all be tired. If you will be seated I will have someone show you to your room."

He had hardly finished speaking before the door opened once again and the butler bowed a plump middle-aged woman into the room.

"What is this, Bernard?" she said, a glint of avid curiosity in her small black eyes. "Why have you left the supper table? Who are these people?"

"This lady," he answered her with a stress on the second word as a reproof, "is my brother's wife, the mother of his child."

An alarming wave of color rose in the florid face of the older woman. "That's impossible," she snapped, "Felix has been dead very nearly a year."

"I assure you it is so." There was a stern note in his voice that did not fail to reach her. She looked long and measuringly at the baby, who was fast becoming furious as his hunger rose.

"How old?" she asked abruptly of Elizabeth. The woman spoke in the Creole French of the area, as had Bernard when he answered her. Bernard made a move to translate but Elizabeth forestalled him. "I understand."

Her mother had been born and reared in New Orleans. Her mother had met her father, a Mississippi planter, while visiting relatives in Natchez.

To the woman she said in a cool voice, "Joseph is four months old."

Bernard Delacroix did not lack a sense of humor. "Let me present you," he said dryly, "to my step-mother, Madame Alma Delacroix."

The older woman barely acknowledged the introduction. With her small plump hands folded across the silk of her black dress she demanded, "Why wasn't I told?"

Bernard began to answer her, but as it was nearly impossible to be heard above the now crying baby, he did not continue. He turned toward the door, looking, Elizabeth supposed, for the butler to summon assistance. When he saw who stood in the doorway a faint smile touched his lips.

"Grand'mere," he said, "what kept you?"

A white-haired woman with steel spectacles on her nose and a cane in her hand advanced into the room. Dressed in black from the pointed leather shoes on her feet to the batiste cap trimmed with black ribbon on her high-held head, she was actually smiling as she came toward Elizabeth.

"You there," she said to Callie, ignoring Bernard's comment. "Take my great-grandson and follow that girl." She jerked her head toward a Negro maid in a white cap and apron who was hovering in the doorway. "Mind you be careful of him going up the stairs. Ask the girl for whatever you need to make him comfortable, but hurry. I dislike intensely to hear a baby crying!"

Elizabeth helped Callie to her feet with a hand under her elbow. Then she watched in some trepidation as they left the room.

"You may be easy," Grand'mere said calmly. "They will be cared for, I assure you."

"Yes, of course," Elizabeth replied, summoning a smile.

"I believe it will be best if you also seek your bed. Quite frankly, you appear exhausted."

She glanced at her grandson. "You agree, Bernard? I think all discussion can be postponed until tomorrow. We have waited this long, a few hours more will make no difference. In any event, if we delay here very much longer we will have Darcourt and Celestine with us."

Bernard inclined his head but made no move to go, his eyes narrow as he gazed at Elizabeth's pale face.

"Sherry and biscuits usually make our supper since we have a large mid-day meal, but I will have something a little more substantial sent to you shortly."

"I would be grateful."

Alma Delacroix had been listening impatiently.

"You will oblige me, Bernard -- unless of course, you wish to hold a family conclave?"

Bernard stared at her a moment, and then lowered his eyelids. With a slight shake of his head, he offered his to the plump woman, his step-mother, and led her from the room, her neck craning back over her shoulder.

For a long time after they had gone the old lady they called Grand'mere stared at Elizabeth. "You have a good chin," she said at last. "And you seem like a sensible girl, not quite what I expected, but sensible. That is an exceedingly rare quality here at Oak Shade. You would do well to cultivate it." Her old voice held a dry humor. Then a stiffness came into her manner.

"I believe in plain speaking and I want you to believe that what I am about to say is to help you make some sort of life here with us. You cannot help but be aware that your marriage to my grandson Felix was a surprise to his family, an unpleasant surprise. He had been betrothed to his cousin, Celestine, since they were children. The betrothal is a serious matter to us Creoles. We are the foreign born descendants of pure French and Spanish forebears and follow their strict marital traditions. The betrothal is an alliance, a contract signed by all parties. To a Creole, breaking off the betrothal is almost as unheard of as breaking the marriage! You must understand our feelings. Felix's death in the war in Texas was not only a great sorrow to us all, but it was also unfortunate for you since you will not have his love and support to help you become a part of this family."

She looked up at Elizabeth to see how she was affected by that statement, and seeing no sign of tears, went on: "You must know that you have been asked to come here for the sake of Felix's son. Perhaps I should not speak of it, but I dislike pretense. I do not know why you have accepted my invitation, I only know that I am glad you have. It required courage, I'm sure. I win do what I can to help you make a place for yourself among us, but you must expect a certain amount of resentment. It is not unnatural under the circumstances."

"I understand," Elizabeth said quietly when she saw that the old lady had finished. A quiet anger seethed in her mind, and she found herself once again feeling nearly glad that it was herself and not Ellen who was here. She understood perfectly. She understood that she was on trial, that if there were adjustments to be made in order for her to live at Oak Shade, she would be expected to make them. She would have to learn to accommodate her life to theirs. She must not be offended because they did not want her but only Joseph. She was to be accepted for his sake. Unconsciously she raised her head. Very well. Their attitude made no difference. She had come, after all, for Joseph's sake also. Joseph had a rightful place here at Oak Shade plantation. So long as he was accepted, loved and cared for, she did not care whether she belonged or not, if she could be with him. Their affection was not necessary for her welfare.

"There is one other thing you should realize. Celestine, the girl Felix was to marry, is living here in the house. Her parents are touring in France, a protracted visit to relatives. For the time being Bernard and I are acting as her guardians. Perhaps you will remember that she is our cousin and try to understand her position. She regards herself in the light of a widow. She loved Felix, you know, and has been in deepest mourning for him."

Elizabeth felt a flush of indignation mounting to her cheeks, but there seemed little to say. How would she have felt, she wondered, if she had in truth been Felix's widow? How could she have brought herself to stay in this house in circumstances like these? It was a useless question. She knew very well that if she had had any legal claim to her sister's child, she would never have come at all.

"Come," the old lady said imperiously. "Give me your arm up the stairs. If I keep you here much longer Bernard will wonder why he should not have his discussion with you also."

"Perhaps he should," Elizabeth said in a tight voice.

"I forbid it. You are much too fatigued. It would not be at all the thing."

Elizabeth's antagonism began to fade as they slowly climbed the stairs. As she held the old lady's elbow she could feel the fragile bones and sense a faint but constant trembling. But though her anger was gone, a depression remained. It settled deeper over her when she glanced over the banister rail and caught sight of the family at the supper table. The room below was bright with a dozen candles. There were candles in the twin candelabra on the sideboard and in the chandelier above the table. An epergne filled to overflowing with white azaleas sat in the center of the white lace cloth which was studded with silver and crystal. Bernard and his step-mother had returned to their places at the table, and there was also a young woman at the board who she thought must be Celestine. She was dressed in black, though her mourning was relieved by a pink camellia at the neckline of the lace bertha that fell over the great, drooping puff sleeves of her dress. Another flower nestled atop the curls of soft black hair at the back of her head, which were drawn back from a demure center part. Her finely molded face was tinted with delicate color as she toyed with a small wine glass and laughed across the table at Bernard. A second man sat at the table, but though he was somberly dressed also, as befitted a house of mourning, his face held a look of such reckless gaiety that Elizabeth came to a halt, startled. His hair gleamed in golden waves under the candlelight and his laughing eyes appeared blue, though it was hard to be certain at such a distance. As she watched he lounged back in his chair, said something to Celestine, and touched a fingertip to his neat mustache, which was a shade darker in color than his hair.

"That is Darcourt, a thorough-going scamp, but likable enough," Grand'mere said, following the direction of her gaze. "My son married twice. Bernard and Felix are of the first marriage, Darcourt and Theresa are the children of the second. Theresa you will see later." There was a shade of contempt in her voice that brought Elizabeth's head around, but the old lady went on as if she was unaware of her interest. "My son has been dead for some time. Perhaps it is a good thing God does, at times, dispense small mercies."

As they moved on up the stairs Elizabeth looked back. A scamp he might be, but he was undeniably a handsome one. He was more handsome in his way than Bernard, though it might have been his animation, his obvious enjoyment of life, that gave that impression. There was a great contrast between the two men, not only in their coloring, but also in their faces. Where Bernard was sun bronzed Darcourt was pale, and where Bernard's mouth was stern with overly firm lines, the other man's curved with an attractive and faintly sensuous charm.

As they turned the corner around the upper newel post Elizabeth felt oddly reluctant to leave that scene of laughter and comfortable living downstairs. It had been a long time since she had enjoyed either. Deep inside her there was a stirring of longing. She had been a part of a family once. Now she was alone, alone with the responsibility for her small nephew. To belong again, to share the responsibility, to be relieved of worries -- the thought was seductive. It was also impossible. Angrily she shook her head, and as she walked on she raised her chin higher in atonement for that moment of weakness.

They passed two small Negro boys scuffling on a long padded bench; these were errand boys stationed in the hall to carry messages and run small errands. Then the two women came to a large bedroom at the front of the house.

Firelight, the only illumination, flickered redly on the hearth, leaving the rest of the room in shadow. Beside the fire a pan of water sat, left from Joseph's bath, and near it Callie sat rocking slowly back and forth. The sleeping child, clean and replete, lay against her shoulder. His dark hair curled in wispy fineness over his head and his long lashes lay on his plump cheeks. His great-grandmother stood looking down at him, and then she turned away, her face impassive.

At their entrance the figure of a woman glided from the depths of darkness near the great four-poster bed. Her skirts of black taffeta made a whispering rustle and the small gold earrings in her ears caught the yellow gleam of the fire. Obviously a French lady's maid, she could have been any age from twenty-five to forty. Her narrow eyes skimmed over Elizabeth's serviceable but unmodish mourning clothes and dismissed them with a tiny derisive movement of her thin lips. She bowed her elaborately dressed head to Grand'mere and set her pale face into deliberately pleasant lines.

"Madame is ready to prepare for bed? If these intruders can be dismissed I will help her. I was certain my mistress could not have ordered this woman and her charge to come here, to her own room, but I could not make this stupid girl who calls herself a house servant attend me, and I would never disturb Madame at supper."

"Do not fuss, Denise," Grand'mere said absently. "I must think."

"But Madame --"

"Be still, I say."

A silence alive with the offended dignity of the maid, Denise, descended.

Suddenly Grand'mere spoke. "The child must sleep in here with me, of course. This room is one of the largest in the house. His nurse will be able to stay near him at night, and since you, Ellen Marie, will wish to be nearby also, you must have the room beside me. It has a connecting door. Denise sleeps there in the ordinary way, but she can very well have another room, perhaps the one next to the nursery." The old lady seemed not to hear Denise's gasp of outrage.

"There is no need for that," Elizabeth protested, aware of the maid's inimical glance toward her. "If there is a nursery --"

"There is every need. No child in this family has ever gone to the nursery until he was three at least. It is much safer to have your babies near you. I always did."

Elizabeth acquiesced, but she thought uncomfortably that it would not make her position any easier to have the household routine disrupted on her account. Then she smiled to herself as she realized that it would not be for her at all but for Joseph.

She stood back as orders were issued and the errand boys in the hall were sent scurrying with instructions. In a very short time a cradle and a trundle bed had been set up in the room, and a light supper had been spread on a table before the fire. The room next door was swept clean of the maid's possessions, the bed remade, and her own trunks brought up and unpacked. Then a long Julep tub was brought up and placed near the fireplace. It was filled with hot water from a can brought with half-running footsteps and a great deal of subdued giggling from the servant girls. Tactfully Grand'mere went back downstairs, taking Callie with her to have her own meal in the kitchen.

The rest of the family might have had sherry and biscuits for supper, but for Elizabeth the kitchen had conjured up breast of chicken served on a bed of rice with a piquant sauce, new potatoes in their jackets, fresh peas, and for dessert, strawberries with cream over a sponge cake, and an excellent madeira. It was delicious, but Elizabeth hurried through it. She was spurred by the thought of the hot bath waiting, her first since leaving Texas nearly a week and a half before.

She stepped into the tub and lay soaking, feeling the tiredness, the soreness, melting away. The feel of the water was silky against her skin and the pleasant tang of the lavender soap imported from England gave her a feeling of luxurious comfort. It had been some time since scented soap had been a part of her life.

A length of toweling lay on a slipper chair standing between the fireplace and the tub. Elizabeth reached out and dragged the chair away from the fire. She could smell the odor of hot lacquer; the chair was much too good to allow its finish to be blistered from the heat. The other furnishings in the room were equally good. An enormous four poster bed of dark wood with a green canopy and hangings stood against one wall. The cradle at the foot was an exact replica of the larger bed, even to the mosquito netting that was looped inside the canopy. A rosewood washstand and a giant armoire, reaching within inches of the high ceiling, were companion pieces to the bed. But the prie-dieu in the corner had a different look, a Spanish appearance, with its carved rest and padded leather bench. It reminded Elizabeth of the altar at the Spanish mission where Ellen and Felix had knelt, of the sonorous words of the marriage service spoken by the priest, the flickering candles and the heavy scent of flowers and wafted incense. Connected as it was with their deaths, however, it was not a happy memory. Elizabeth shook her head to banish it, but there was no escape. The black crepe of deep mourning hanging over the pictures on the walls, on the mirrors, and even surmounting the windows, was a glaring reminder.

She frowned and stood up suddenly, sloshing the bath water over onto the floor. Exclaiming in annoyance, she reached for the towel and stepped out of the tub, and then she went still as a strange noise came from the connecting room. Unlike the bustle of preparation that had been going on earlier, this had a furtive sound. As she listened it came again, the rustling of cloth or bed covers, and then there was the scrape of a hasty footstep and a muffled thump as the door into the hall was softly closed.

A servant returning to finish some small forgotten job, she tried to tell herself as she hurriedly skimmed into her nightgown and pulled her dressing gown around her. But somehow she could not make herself believe it. A silence had fallen over the house. It had been some time since she had seen the family at the dinner table. Where were they now? Had they come up to bed? She glanced over her shoulder at Joseph sleeping quietly in the cradle. Assured that he was safe, she jerked the belt of her dressing gown in a knot and then walked to the connecting door, turned the knob, and pushed it open.

There was no one there, but then she had not expected there to be, remembering the sound of the closing door. The room was neat, orderly, and apparently unchanged from the way the maids had left it. Or was it? Hadn't the bed been left turned for the night? But why come back in and make it up again?

The bed looked soft, tempting with its feather mattress and spread of muslin edged with lace. The thought of all the lumpy, smelly mattresses she had endured in the past week came to her, and she felt an almost unendurable weariness. It might be diplomatic, and better-mannered, to wait up to bid her hostess good-night, but she did not know where the old lady had gone or when she would return. The warm fire and the hot bath had made leaden weights of her eyelids, relaxed knotted muscles, and taken the last vestige of her energy.

Slowly she moved forward, caught the spread, and flung it back.

Suddenly she jerked her hand away, a surprised cry catching in her throat. Between the bed pillows of the four-poster bed lay a green preserving jar. Its loose glass lid had fallen open as the spread was removed, and spiders, released from their prison, crawled from the jar, spreading out over the sheet.

Small and large, brown and gray, a dozen or more spiders ran or crept in all directions, their legs casting multiplying shadows in the light of the candle beside the bed. Then over the glass lid a last spider came crawling. Its plump, unwieldy body was a shining black, and on the underside an orange hourglass could just barely be seen.