She keeps telling herself that she won't,
she absolutely won't unless she absolutely has to. But she is lucky or
unlucky enough to be a person of some intuition--she knows Oliver, and,
also, she knows her mother--though now she is beginning to think with an
empty feeling that she really doesn't know the latter at all.
What facts there are are rather like Mrs. Ellicott's handwriting--vague and
crossed and illegibly hard to read. But Nancy stares at them all the time
that she is eating her breakfast and responding mechanically to Mrs.
Winters' questions. And then, suddenly, she _knows_.
Mrs. Ellicott like many inexperienced criminals, has committed the deadly
error of letting her mind dwell too long on the _mise-en-scene_ of her
crime. And her pen--that tell-tale pen that all her life she has taken a
delight almost sensual in letting run on from unwieldy sentence to pious
formless sentence, has at last betrayed her completely. There is genuine
tragedy in store for Mrs. Ellicott--Nancy in spite of being modern, is
Nancy and will forgive her--but Nancy, for all her trying, will never quite
be able to respect her again.
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