Sunday.
My dear Mother,
I hope you are very well. I am learning Italian with Sister Catherine. It is very nice. I know twenty-two words now and the present indicitive of “I am.” I like it very much. We have a new girl called Dorothy Andrews. She is very nice. She is eight and a half years old, but she is not so big as me. I must stop now because the bell is ringing for Vespurs and Benedicsion.
Your loving
Letizia.
She was safe for so many years, Nancy thought. Would it be so very wrong to embark upon this adventure?
That night, when she was singing the first of her two songs, she tried to imagine that the piece was Aïda and that she was Amneris.
“If I get a genuine encore,” she promised herself, “I’ll write to him and accept.”
And she did get a most unmistakable encore.
“Your songs went very well to-night, dear,” said Miss Fitzroy grudgingly. “Had you got any friends in front?”
The next day Nancy wrote to John Kenrick and told him that she was going to accept his kind offer, and that on Sunday, October 23rd, she should be in London.