In the end Mr. Gordon did not die. He remained an invalid for some time, but slowly recovered. Nancy, by that time, had become such a necessity to him that he went to Clintondale for the weeks of convalescence when the doctors refused to let him get back into legal harness again.
He was really a changed man. He could not act as Nancy's guardian; Mr. Bruce, Jennie's father, did that. But there was scarcely a pleasant afternoon during the remainder of Nancy's junior year, while Mr. Gordon was at Clintondale, that a very red-haired youth, in a smart auto outfit, did not drive up to the school entrance in a little runabout, and whisk Nancy down to the village hotel to see Mr. Gordon for an hour or so.
And Nancy learned to like Mr. Gordon better than she had ever expected to when she first bearded the lion in his den.
After Jennie Bruce's father, on behalf of Nancy, made his first demand upon Senator Montgomery in reprisal of the latter's diversion of Nancy's fortune, Grace Montgomery disappeared suddenly from Pinewood Hall.
It had been so sudden that the girls--especially those who had been so friendly with her--could scarcely recover from the shock.
At first, when Nancy and Jennie had gone off at midnight, it was rumored around the school (said rumor starting from Cora Rathmore's room) that the two chums had been expelled for holding an "orgy" after hours. And there was nobody to contradict this statement, eagerly repeated by the Montgomery clique, until Jennie came back.
She was bound not to tell Nancy's secret, however; otherwise Grace Montgomery would have "sung small." The latter, however, was her bold and mischievous self right up to the very day--some weeks later--when she received a long letter from her heart-broken mother.
Mrs. Montgomery had never known the truth about her sister's child. It became known somehow that Grace's mother begged Grace to make a friend of Nancy and try to influence her to make her lawyer's demands less severe upon the Senator, for his fortune was toppling.
But Grace would never have done this. She had talked of, and to, Nancy Nelson too outrageously. She could not have asked a favor of the girl she so disliked--whom she doubly disliked now!
