She did, on this morning, however, think to open the window before she left Room Seven, and left the corridor door open, too. Immediately a draft of air sucked through the room and blew Nan’s uncompleted letter to her mother out of doors. The result of this mischance was more important than one would have thought.
In the first place, Cora Courtney chanced to be walking briskly in the snowy garden. The thin white coverlet that had shrouded the walks and lawn overnight, crisped under her footsteps as she tramped along. Down fluttered Nan’s unfinished letter right in Cora’s path. Of course, Cora picked it up and it was only natural that she should look at it to see what it was.
“Goodness! Can this be so?” murmured Cora, after a glance down the written lines on the first page. “Oh! Dear me!”
She was not a hard-hearted girl at all. And Nan Sherwood had never done any wrong to Cora, or said anything to her that was not kindly. Cora had no reason whatsoever for wishing the girl from Tillbury ill. So, naturally, she was sorry to learn that such serious trouble had come upon her schoolmate.
Under other influences than those that had shaped her course ever since she had come to Lakeview Hall, Cora would have been a very different girl. Her people were really very poor. Her father was addicted to drink and his family suffered thereby. Her mother had come of a well-to-do family; but her relatives had almost all turned against her when she married Mr. Courtney.
One aunt, however, remembered the oldest of the Courtney children, and offered to educate Cora. Instead of sending the girl to a school where she would have been quickly and efficiently trained to earn her own living, the foolish aunt sent her to this exclusive finishing school for young ladies.
Every one about her had more money than poor Cora Courtney. Her clothing was barely sufficient. Dr. Prescott, out of her own pocket, delicately supplied the poor girl with some absolute necessities.
Thus feeling the nip of poverty all the time, Cora was easily tempted to join the clique of parasites who gathered around the free-handed, but unpleasant, Linda Riggs. They all toadied to Linda, ran errands for her, and as Laura Polk tartly said, “performed all the duties of the Roman populace as Linda, as a female Cæsar, demanded.”
Now Cora was immediately moved to pity by what she had discovered in Nan Sherwood’s unfinished letter. She could appreciate the sting of poverty, and knew how she should feel herself if her great aunt abruptly cut off the tuition fees. And in this case Nan seemed to be giving up all from a sense of duty.
Her heart told Cora to run to Nan with the letter and tell her how sorry she was; but her head advised her to take an entirely different course. And Cora had learned to let her head guide her, and not her heart.