When those then famous warriors, Colonel Gaynor and Captain Green, were obstinately fighting extradition in Quebec; when in Washington the Senate was wording a suitable resolution wherewith to congratulate Cuba upon that island's brand-new independence; and when Messieurs Fitzsimmons and Jeffries were making amicable arrangements in San Francisco to fight for the world's championship:—at this remote time, in Chicago (on the same day, indeed, that in this very city Mr. S.E. Gross was legally declared the author of a play called Cyrano de Bergerac), the Sons of the Colonial Governors opened their tenth biennial convention. You may depend upon it that Colonel Rudolph Musgrave represented the Lichfield chapter.  
It was two days later the telegram arrived. It read:
 
  Agatha very ill come to me roger in perfect health.
  PATRICIA.
 
He noted how with Stapyltonian thrift Patricia telegraphed ten words precisely….
 
And when he had reached home, late in the evening, the colonel, not having taken his bunch of keys with him, laid down his dress-suit case on the dark porch, and reached out one hand to the door-bell. He found it muffled with some flimsy, gritty fabric. He did not ring.
 
Upon the porch was a rustic bench. He sat upon it for a quarter of an hour—precisely where he had first talked with Agatha about Patricia's first coming to Lichfield…. Once the door of a house across the street was opened, with a widening gush of amber light wherein he saw three women fitting wraps about them. One of them was adjusting a lace scarf above her hair.
 
"No, we're not a bit afraid—Just around the corner, you know—Such a pleasant evening——" Their voices carried far in the still night.
 
Rudolph Musgrave was not thinking of anything. Presently he went around through the side entrance, and thus came into the kitchen, where the old mulattress, Virginia, was sitting alone. The room was very hot…. In Agatha's time supper would have been cooked upon the gas-range in the cellar, he reflected…. Virginia had risen and made as though to take his dress-suit case, her pleasant yellow face as imperturbable as an idol's.
 
"No—don't bother, Virginia," said Colonel Musgrave.
 
He met Patricia in the dining-room, on her way to the kitchen. She had not chosen—as even the most sensible of us will instinctively decline to do—to vex the quiet of a house wherein death was by ringing a bell.
 
Holding his hand in hers, fondling it as she talked, Patricia told how three nights before Miss Agatha had been "queer, you know," at supper. Patricia had not liked to leave her, but it was the night of the Woman's Club's second Whist Tournament. And Virginia had promised to watch Miss Agatha. And, anyhow, Miss Agatha had gone to bed before Patricia left the house, and anybody would have thought she was going to sleep all night. And, in fine, Patricia's return at a drizzling half-past eleven had found Miss Agatha sitting in the garden, in her night-dress only, weeping over fancied grievances—and Virginia asleep in the kitchen. And Agatha had died that afternoon of pneumonia.
 
Even in the last half-stupor she was asking always when would Rudolph come? Patricia told him….
 
Rudolph Musgrave did not say anything. Without any apparent emotion he put Patricia aside, much as he did the dress-suit case which he had forgotten to lay down until Patricia had ended her recital.
 
He went upstairs—to the front room, Patricia's bedroom. Patricia followed him.
 
Agatha's body lay upon the bed, with a sheet over all. The undertaker's skill had arranged everything with smug and horrible tranquillity.
 
Rudolph Musgrave remembered he was forty-six years old; and when in all these years had there been a moment when Agatha—the real Agatha—had not known that what he had done was self-evidently correct, because otherwise Rudolph would not have done it?
 
"I trust you enjoyed your whist-game, Patricia."
 
............