Miss Lady could never clearly recall those first days after her
father's death. They seemed to her a confused nightmare of strange
doctors and nurses, of a strange man hovering between life and death
in the guest-room bed, of strange people coming and going, or sitting
in hushed groups on the stiff horsehair chairs in the hall, waiting
for news. Two facts alone remained fixed in the whirling chaos of
unrealities; her father was dead, and no letter had come from Donald
Morley.
Each day when the mail arrived she roused from her apathy, and with
trembling fingers sorted out the letters, going over them again and
again, and never finding the one she sought. Gradually beneath the
poignant grief for her father, came the dull persistent pain of a
first disillusion. The belief and loyalty with which she had started
out to defend Donald began to weaken before his silence. In his
trouble she had been ready to rush to him, to succor and forgive, but
he had not called upon her. Now in her great need, she was calling to
him, and he did not come. Suspicion began to crowd on the heels of
doubt.
Had he not acknowledged his instability? Had her father not seen it
from the first? Was his desire to settle down in the country but one
of the whims of which his life seemed made up? Perhaps she herself had
only been a passing fancy, something wanted for the moment, but soon
forgotten.
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