Then she flew to the other extreme. He had brought her up as his own child, encouraging a belief that she would inherit his whole fortune, and now he was cutting her off with something like a tenth and contemptuously bidding her beg for alms at the door of a trust company!
She stared into the dark until the light crept through her blinds. Then she slept until the nurse called her at eight.
“Mr. Farley’s waiting for you to have breakfast with him; how soon can you be ready?”
“Isn’t he so well?” Nan asked quickly.
“Nothing unusual; but he seemed tired after his ride yesterday and had a bad night.”
Nan, sitting up in bed, thrust her hand under her pillow and touched the will guiltily.
“I suppose,” she said, as the nurse crossed to the windows and threw up the shades, “that he may have a relapse at any time. The doctor prepared me for that. Please order breakfast sent up and tell papa I’ll be ready in five minutes.”
In her broodings of the night she had dramatized herself as confronting him in all manner of situations, but she was reluctant to face him now. She jumped out of bed, fortified herself for the day with a cold shower, and presented herself to him in a flowered kimono as the maid was laying the cloth on the stand by his bed.
“Well, Nan,” he said wearily, “I hope you had a better night than I did.”
“Oh, I don’t need much sleep,” she answered. “Edison says we all sleep too much, anyhow.”