As the month of August moved toward an end there was no longer any doubt as to the "failing" of Aunt Cassie; it was confirmed by the very silence with which she surrounded the state of her health. For forty years one had discussed Aunt Cassie's health as one discussed the weather—a thing ever present in the consciousness of man about which one could do nothing, and now Aunt Cassie ceased suddenly to speak of her health at all. She even abandoned her habit of going about on foot and took to making her round of calls in the rattling motor which she protested to fear and loathe, and she came to lean more and more heavily upon the robust Miss Peavey for companionship and support. Claiming a fear of burglars, she had Miss Peavey's bed moved into the room next to hers and kept the door open between. She developed, Olivia discovered, an almost morbid terror of being left alone.
And so the depression of another illness came to add its weight to the burden of Jack's death and the grief of John Pentland. The task of battling the cloud of melancholy which hung over the old house grew more and more heavy upon Olivia's shoulders. Anson remained as usual indifferent to any changes in the life about him, living really in the past among all the sheaves of musty papers, a man not so much cold-blooded as bloodless, for there was nothing active nor calculating in his nature, but only a great inertia, a lack
