CHAPTER XXV
NANCY'S CONFESSION
A thousand torments seemed to rack poor Nancy's tired soul and body. For a long time she had lain, very still, across her bed. Then she had, mechanically, made ready for the night. But sleep would not come. Wider and wider-eyed she stared at the dim outline that was her open window. After awhile she crossed to it and knelt down before it, her bare arms folded on the sill.
A sense of remorse, which Nancy had been trying for some time past to keep tucked back somewhere in a corner of her mind, now overwhelmed her. She saw herself a cheat, an imposter. What would these good people of Happy House say of her when they knew all of them, even Peter Hyde—and little Nonie!
Her hands clenched tightly, Nancy faced what she called the reckoning.
Only a few days before she and Aunt Milly had had a long talk. Aunt Milly had told her how, one afternoon, she had tried to walk—and had failed.
"I'd been praying, my dear, that it might be possible. I thought, perhaps, I felt so much better——. But the wonderful thing was Nancy,—I didn't care! My life seems so full, now, of real things, thanks to all you've done for me, that whether I can walk or not is insignificant. And I shall always have you, anyway, Nancy!" Aunt Milly had said with the yearning look in her eyes that Nancy knew so well.
What would Aunt Milly say when she knew?
How had she, Nancy, betrayed Sabrina's trust?
Rapidly, as one can at such moments, Nancy's mind went over the weeks of her stay at Happy House. She had let herself go so far; she had taught these people she was deceiving to grow fond of her—to need her!