girls abroad--or was it Joan that led the way? She
considered, after reaching the little Italian town from which she had
seen Meredith depart, how best to speak of Thornton. She got so far as
the telling of Meredith's wedding in the unchanged chapel on the hill
when Joan startled her by asking quite as a matter of course:

"Is our father still alive?"

Nancy turned pale and shrank before the question, but she saw that the
cool tone had controlled the situation. Doris looked relieved instead of
shocked.

"We've often talked of it, Nan and I," Joan proceeded; "it did not seem
very vital one way or the other until now."

"As far as I know," Doris was surprised at her own calmness, "he is
still alive."

"I'm glad of that," Joan remarked, and there was a glint in her eyes.
"I'd hate to have him dead--just now."

Quite without reason Doris laughed. After all, what she had conjured up
as a ghost was turning into a human possibility. It was never to
frighten her in the future. Joan had felled the spectre by her first
stroke.

Then Nancy spoke:

"I never want to hear his name again," she said, firmly, relentlessly.

Doris looked at her in amazement. Later she confided to Joan her
surprise.

"I did not know the child had such sternness."

Joan shrugged her shoulders and smiled.

"Nan is like a rock underneath, Aunt Dorrie," she said. "I suppose it
is--what shall I say?--blood! It is concentrated in Nan. She's like
you. Disgrace, or what seemed like disgrace, would kill her--it would
make me fight!"

And after that conversation all inclination to confide further in the
girls as to their relationship or lack of it deserted Doris.

She saw a new cause for caution and went back to the stand she had taken
when the children were babies--but with far less courage.

"When they marry, of course, it must be told."

Doris returned to New York in September, and after a fortnight in which
she closed the old house and made arrangements for the servants, she was
so exhausted that she gladly turned her face southward.

Nancy, already, was her mainstay. The girl had apparently got under the
burden, and held it secure on her firm, young shoulders. She developed
initiative and the healing touch. No one disputed her where Doris was
concerned, and Martin grimly accepted her as the most necessary thing in
the hope that lay in Ridge House.

Their appearance there was marked by two incidents that Doris alone
heeded.

First was