“Miss Field will dine downstairs,” Richard said, without glancing in their direction.  And when the maid had gone he said with pleasant authority, “I wish you and Nina would do that regularly, Miss Field, when you have no other plan.”

“Thank you,” Harriet said, with her heart singing.

Perhaps Nina suspected that something about his high-handed domestic readjusting was unusual.  She looked from her father to Harriet, and after a moment’s silence asked abruptly: 

“When is Mother coming back?”

“I don’t know!” her father answered, quickly.

“Say, listen, are we going to dress?” asked Amy.  Nina, instantly diverted, suggested that they go in.  Nina’s awkward bigness and Amy’s mousy neutral tones were as well displayed in one garment as another, but both girls debated over pinks and blues, crepes and mulls, every evening, as if the world was watching them alone.  Harriet lingered for only a word.

“Mr. Carter, it occurred to me that old Mrs. Singleton is going to California, in her own car, to-morrow.  Would it be possible to let Nina and Amy and the household generally think—­”

“Yes?” he encouraged her as she paused dubiously.  He had risen to his feet, and fixed his tired eyes on her face.

“I was wondering if we might confide in Mrs. Singleton—­she was always very fond of Mrs. Carter—­and give out the impression that Mrs. Carter had suddenly decided to make the trip with her.”

“That’s an idea,” Richard said, thoughtfully.  “I could see Mrs. Singleton to-night—­and—­and talk it over.”

“It might serve for only a few days,” Harriet submitted.

“Yes, I see,” he agreed, slowly.

“Well, I can give Nina a hint now!” Harriet said, going.  The late golden sunshine struck her bright hair to an aureole, as she went up the brick steps and disappeared.

But it was too late for any soothing deception of Nina.  A scene was in full progress in Nina’s bedroom, and Harriet’s eye had only to go from the prone form on the bed to the crushed newspaper that had drifted to the floor, to know that the secret was out.  Isabelle’s face, radiant and happy, looked out from the page.  It was flanked by two smaller pictures, Richard’s and Anthony Pope’s.  Harriet could see the big letters:  “Young Millionaire—­Wife of Richard Carter.”  The deluge was upon them.

“Oh—­it’s a lie—­it’s a lie!  My beautiful little mother!” Nina was sobbing.  “Oh, no, it’s not true!  It’s a lie!  Oh, how shall I ever hold up my head again—­to be disgraced—­now just when I’m so young—­and ha-h-happy!”

“Nina, my child, control yourself!” Harriet, ignoring the staring and pale-faced Amy, sat down on the edge of the bed, and shook the girl slightly.  “You mustn’t give way!  Come now, my dear, you must face this like a woman.  Think how your father and Ward will look to you—­”

Acting, all of it, said Harriet in her soul.  But despite the youthful appetite for heroics, there were real tears in Nina’s eyes, as there had been in her grandmother’s a few hours ago.