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George always signed himself “Geo.” in important or official letters because that was how Will Spivey set up his business letterheads—“Geo. Boswell, Printer and Bookbinder.” And under that, in smaller type: “Proprietor of the Guardian Press, Market Street, Browdley.” And under that, in even smaller type: “Estimates Free. Good Work Guaranteed.”

***

About seven o’clock he went to the corner, posted the letter, and re-entered his house to find that Annie had returned from spending a night with her mother across the town and had already noticed his bag half-packed on the bed upstairs. “Another conference?” she exclaimed. “Why, it’s only last week end you was away at the last one....”

“It’s canceled,” George answered. “I’m not going after all.”

“Then I’ll unpack your things and have breakfast ready in a jiffy.”

George was suddenly aware that he had none of his usual healthy early morning appetite, but she was in the kitchen before he could say so, and by the time he followed her there he had decided he might as well say everything else that had to be said and get it over.

He stood in the kitchen doorway wondering how to make it sound not too dramatic, yet not so commonplace that she would miss the full significance. He began: “By the way, I’ve had news of Livia.” (He always called her “Livia” to Annie.)

“You have? ... Well, that’s nice. Did she say when she was coming home?”

That was a good opening. “I’m—er—afraid she’s—she’s not coming home.”

“What?” Annie swung round in consternation as she interpreted the remark in the only way that occurred to her. “Oh, my goodness, she’s not—she’s not—you don’t mean—” And then a flood of tears.

It was quite a minute before George realized what was in Annie’s mind. Then he had to comfort her and meanwhile explain matters more specifically. “Good heavens, no—she’s all right—she’s quite well—nothing at all’s happened to her. She’s just not coming home. ... She’s decided to—to leave me. It does happen, sometimes—that people don’t hit it off together.... I just wanted you to know, so that you can get her clothes in order—I expect she’ll be sending for them soon. No need to talk about it in the town yet, though of course people will have to know sooner or later.” (And no need, yet, to tell even Annie the other details.)

Annie, having been heartbroken, now became furious. She belonged to a world in which women do not leave their husbands, but regard themselves as lucky to get and keep any man who does not drink, gamble, or beat them. And George not only possessed these negative virtues, but others to which Annie had for years accorded increasing admiration. She really believed him to be a great man, and for a wife to be dissatisfied with such a paragon seemed to her incomprehensible as well as shocking. She had never liked Livia as much as George, and that made her now feel that she had never liked Livia at all. “She’s a bad lot,” she whimpered scornfully. “And it’s all you could expect from where she comes from.”

“Nay ... nay ...” said George pacifyingly. “She’s all right, in her own way. And maybe I’m all right in mine.”

“I never really took to her,” Annie continued. “And I’m not the only one.... There was something queer about her, or folks wouldn’t have talked the way they did about her father’s death and what she had to do with it—because there’s never no smoke without fire—”

“Oh yes, there is, often enough,” George interrupted sharply.

“Well, anyhow, there was something queer about Stoneclough altogether—what with ghosts and drownings and everything—and I’m sorry if I’ve let out something I wasn’t supposed to....”

She was on the point of weeping again, so George made haste to reassure her. “Oh, that’s all right, Annie. I don’t think you could tell me much that I didn’t hear at the time. But it was all gossip—not worth repeating now or even remembering—that’s the way I look at it. I doubt if we’ll ever know the whole truth about what really happened.” He found something he could force a smile at. “And as for the ghosts—why, that’s only an old yarn—a sort of local legend.... I heard it long before Livia was born....”