-with the exception, of course, of Billy, who was
in her confidence--the whole business became more and more puzzling.
Caroline, her susceptibility to vicarious distress being augmented by
the sensitiveness of her own emotional state, yearned and prayed over
her alternately. Betty, avid of excitement, spent her days in the
pleasurable anticipation of a dramatic bankruptcy. It was on Dick,
however, that the actual strain came. He saw Nancy growing paler and
more ethereal each day, on her feet from morning till night
manipulating the affairs of an enterprise that seemed to be assuming
more preposterous proportions every hour of its existence. He made
surreptitious estimates of expenditures and suffered accordingly,
approximating the economic unsoundness of the Inn by a very close
figure, and still Nancy kept him at arm's length and flouted all his
suggestions for easing, what seemed to him now, her desperate
situation.

He managed to pick her up in his car one day with Sheila, and
persuaded her to a couple of hours in the open. She was on her way
home from the Inn, and had meant to spend that time resting and
dressing before she went back to consult with Gaspard concerning the
night meal. She had no complaint to make now of the usurpation of her
authority or the lack of actual executive service that was required of
her. With the increase in the amount of business that the Inn was
carrying she found that every particle of her energy was necessary to
get through the work of the day.

"I'm worried about you," Dick said, as they took the long ribbon of
road that unfurled in the direction of Yonkers, and Nancy removed her
hat to let the breeze cool her distracted brow. His man Williams, was
driving.

"Well, don't tell me so," she answered a trifle ungraciously.

"Miss Dear is cross to-day," Sheila explained. "The milk did not come
for Gaspard to make the poor people's custard, _creme renverse_, he
makes--deliciously good, and we give it to the clerking girls."

"The buttermilk cultures were bad," Nancy said. "And I wasn't able to
get any of the preparations of it, that I can trust. There are one or
two people that ought to have it every day and their complexions show
it if they don't."

"I suppose so," Dick said, with a grimace.

"These people who have worked in New York all summer have run pretty
close to their margin of energy. You've no idea what a difference a
few calories make to them, or how closely I have to wa