And so the pretty doll-child grew up into womanhood, conscious only of the rich luxurious world in which she was sheltered by her foolishly-indulgent mother. If you looked into Ada’s rose-tinted face there was no expression there to indicate the girl’s true character. Ada Nicoli’s soul lay dormant. At the age of eighteen she was merely a pretty human machine that seldom went wrong, for she had excellent health and a sweet temper.
On the afternoon when my story opens, Ada had been driving as usual with her mother in Central Park. It was a brilliant early summer day, and the whole world in Ada’s eyes was more than usually beautiful, but for once her gentle and affectionate mother was in an irritable humour. It seemed to Ada as if she were suffering from some suppressed excitement, and as though some cruel blow had suddenly shattered her nerves and blighted the beauty of her pretty soulless face. That drive was the only unhappy hour Ada could ever remember having spent with her mother. When they got home Mrs. Nicoli retired to her room, and then a message was brought to Ada that her mother was too unwell to come down to dinner. It was a silent, miserable dinner that night, for Mr. Nicoli was in one of his most self-absorbed humours, and Ada knew her father too well to try and break the silence with forced conversation. She noticed too that his tired face was even paler than usual, and that his dark, quickly-moving eyes were more restless than before. This was the first little shadow of a cloud in Ada’s gay young life. She spent that evening with the children in the schoolroom, longing for bedtime. Before retiring to bed she knocked at her mother’s bedroom door. Her father came out and motioned to her to be quiet. “Your mother has a nervous headache,” he said, “and you must not ask to see her.” And with an abrupt good-night he turned and left his daughter.
The next day Ada was astonished to see two trained nurses coming and going from her mother’s room. She was not told what was the matter with her mother, and there was a horrible air of mystery about the house. Ada resented being treated like a child, and forbidden to enter her mother’s room. And in the afternoon of that dreadful day she waylaid a nurse coming out of the sick-room and demanded an answer to her question—
“What is the matter with mumma?” she said, with such a look of misery on her young face that the nurse could not put her aside. “If her illness is not infectious, why may I not see her?”
“Your poor mumma has had some shock,” replied the nurse, “which has upset her nerves.”
“What shock?” Ada asked. “She did not tell me, and mumma tells me everything.”
“That’s what the doctor can’t find out, but there now, I must go back. Nurse Hatch can’t manage her alone.”
“Can’t manage her alone,” Ada repeated. “Oh, do let me go to her. I know I could soothe her. When mumma has a headache she likes me to be with her.”
But the bedroom door was shut on Ada’s last words, and she heard the lock turned from inside. She was listening to her mother’s excited voice when her father came along the corridor. He stopped beside Ada, and spoke abruptly to her.
“I want you to take the children for a drive in Central Park this afternoon, and on your way tell the coachman to drive up and down Fourth Avenue. Put on your own and the children’s smartest dresses, and stop and speak to anyone you know. Say that your mother has got a bad headache, and don’t go showing the world that miserable face.”