touched
her in nine days.

It was all as though she were enfolded deep in the embrace of a not
too fervent benediction.

About her were the large, dignified spaces of her bedroom, and beyond
were the yet greater spaces of her sitting-room; and from where she
lay she could see the gleaming white of her large tiled bathroom. And
there were drawers and drawers of fresh _lingerie_; and there were her
closets filled with comfortable gowns that would be a thousand times
more grateful after a week of Matilda's unchanged and oppressive
black. And there on her dressing-table were the multitudinous
implements of silver that had to do with her toilet.

After what she had been through, this, indeed, was comfort.

But as consciousness grew clearer, her forgotten troubles and her
dangers returned to her. For a brief period alarm possessed her. Then
reason began to assert itself; and the hope which the night before had
been hardly more than desperation began to take on the character of
confidence. She saw possibilities. And the longer she considered, the
more and greater the possibilities were. Her original plan began to
re-present itself to her; modified, of course, to meet the altered
conditions. If she could only remain here, undiscovered, then months
hence, when it was announced that Mrs. De Peyster (she sent up a
warm prayer for Olivetta!) was homeward bound, Jack and Mary and that
unthinkable Mr. Pyecroft would decamp, if they had not gone before,
and leave the way clear for the easy interchange by Olivetta and
herself of their several personalities.

As she lay there in the gentle Sabbath calm, in the extra-curled hair
of her ultra-superior mattress, this revised version of her plan, in
the first glow of its conception, seemed alluringly plausible. She
had to be more careful, to be sure, but aside from this the new plan
seemed quite as good as the original. In fact, in her reaction from
the alarms of yesterday, it somehow seemed even better.

Twelve hours before there had seemed no possible solution to her
predicament. And here it was--come unexpectedly to her aid, as was
the way with things in life; and a very simple solution, too.
Lazily, hazily, a poet's line teased and evaded her memory. What was
it?--something about "a pleasant hermitage." That was just what this
was: a pleasant hermitage.

But presently, as she lay comforting herself, and the morning wore
on, she became increasingly conscious of an indefinable un