After Nancy was made to understand her aunt's state of health--and it was, in the end, Martin who informed her--she rose superbly to what offered, poor child, an opportunity peculiarly her own. To her was given the sacred duty of watching the one she loved best in the world; of warding off anything that threatened her peace and comfort. Here were power and authority and, though no one suspected, she would rule in her narrow, detached kingdom. Nothing should defeat her. They should all look to her! Almost fiercely Nancy undertook her silent task. She smiled, she learned new subtleties; she soon became the pretty barrier between Doris and any troubling thing. With her half-afraid glance fixed upon the dazzling Joan, it was small wonder that Doris fell into the trap set for her by Martin and Nancy. She took the girls abroad--or was it Joan that led the way? She considered, after reaching the little Italian town from which she had seen Meredith depart, how best to speak of Thornton. She got so far as the telling of Meredith's wedding in the unchanged chapel on the hill when Joan startled her by asking quite as a matter of course: "Is our father still alive?" Nancy turned pale and shrank before the question, but she saw that the cool tone had controlled the situation. Doris looked relieved instead of shocked. "We've often talked of it, Nan and I," Joan proceeded; "it did not seem very vital one way or the other until now." "As far as I know," Doris was surprised at her own calmness, "he is still alive." "I'm glad of that," Joan remarked, and there was a glint in her eyes. "I'd hate to have him dead--just now." Quite without reason Doris laughed. After all, what she had conjured up as a ghost was turning into a human possibility. It was never to frighten her in the future. Joan had felled the spectre by her first stroke. Then Nancy spoke: "I never want to hear his name again," she said, firmly, relentlessly. Doris looked at her in amazement. Later she confided to Joan her surprise. "I did not know the child had such sternness." Joan shrugged her shoulders and smiled. "Nan is like a rock underneath, Aunt Dorrie," she said. "I suppose it is--what shall I say?--blood! It is concentrated in Nan. She's like you. Disgrace, or what seemed like disgrace, would kill her--it would make me fight!" And after that conversation all inclination to confide further in the girls as to their relationship or lack of it deserted Doris. She saw a new cause for caution and went back to the stand she had taken when the children were babies--but with far less courage. "When they marry, of course, it must be told." Doris returned to New York in September, and after a fortnight in which she closed the old house and made arrangements for the servants, she was so exhausted that she gladly turned her face southward.