e falls into
it as if he were diving into butter and though he murmurs "Nancy" once
to himself before his head sinks into pillows, in two seconds he is
drugged with such utter slumber that it is only the blind stupefied face
of a man under ether that he is able to lift from his haven when
Ted comes in half an hour later and announces, in the voice of one
proclaiming a new revelation, that Elinor is the finest person that ever
lived and that everything is most wholly and completely all right.

XLVI

"A letter for you, dear Nancy."

Mrs. Winters gestures at it refinedly--she never points--as Nancy comes
in to breakfast looking as if whatever sleep she had had not done her
very much good.

"From your dear, dear mother, I should imagine," she adds in sugared
watery tones.

Nancy opens it without much interest--Mother, oh, yes, Mother. Six
crossed pages of St. Louis gossip and wanderingly fluent advice. She
sets herself to read it, though, dutifully enough--she is under Mrs.
Winters' eyes.

Father's usual September cold. The evil ways of friends' servants.
Good wishes to Mrs. Winters. "Heart's Gold--such a really _inspiring_
moving-picture." Advice. Advice. Then, half-way down the next to last
page Nancy stops puzzledly. She doesn't quite understand.

"And hope, my daughter, that now you are really cured though you may
have passed through bitter waters but all such things are but God's
divine will to chasten us. And when the young man told me of his
_escapade_ I felt that even over the telephone he might have"

She sets herself wearily to decode some sort of definite meaning out
of Mother's elliptic style. An escapade. Of Oliver? and over the
telephone--what was that? Mother hadn't said anything--

She finishes the letter and then rereads all the parts of it that seem
to have any bearing on the cryptogram, and finally near the end, and
evidently connected with the "telephone," she comes upon the phrase
"that day."

There is only one day that Mother alludes to as "That Day" now. Before
her broken engagement "That Day" was when Father failed.

But Oliver _hadn't_ telephoned--she'd asked Mother _particularly_ if
he had, and he hadn't. But surely if he had telephoned, surely, surely,
Mother would have told her about it--Mother would have known that there
were a few things where she really hadn't any right to interfere.

Mother had never liked Oliver, though she'd pretended. Never.

Nancy remembers back and