Later on they took her upstairs as quietly as possible, Mrs. Manly and the nurse, with Nora trailing behind. Her mother's door was closed. There was a new housemaid making up her bed, and the parlor maid was taking the covers off the furniture. They put her carefully on the chaise longue and went away. All but Nora. Nora was unpacking the shabby bag, with its shabbier contents. She laid out the things on the bed, the underwear Kay had made for herself, the cheap cotton dresses, the aprons, and as she worked she wept softly. Once she came and stood over Kay, her wet eyes burning.
"When your father comes I'll get out some clothes for you. Your mother and I wanted to send them to you, so he locked them up."
"I didn't need many clothes, Nora dear."
Nora glanced at the bed, and suddenly went out of the room.
Reluctantly Kay dragged her thoughts from her mother to her father. What if he would not let her stay? If he turned her out? She had never thought of that contingency; his anger and resentment she had prepared herself for. All that nightmare trip East she had known she would have to face them. But a hostility which would lock away her clothes and shut up her rooms might go further, might close his door to her. And there were other complications. Nora, calmer now, and coming back to draw her bath, asked her not to say that she had written the letter.
"He'd put me out, quick as not," she said. "And I want to stay, Miss Kay. I've been with her a long time. I'm not leaving her now."
She had to promise, but it left her own position anomalous. Was she to say she had left Tom? Would she have to say she had left him, in order to stay with her mother? But hadn't she left Tom? The battle which had raged within her on the train renewed itself now. She knew Tom himself thought so, had considered their parting final. Lying there, the water running into the tub in her bathroom, the scent of the bath salts rising with the steam, she saw him
