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 uncomfortable sensation.  And presently the sensation became more definite; became localized; and she was aware that she was growing hungry.  And in the same moment came the dismaying realization that, in their haste of the night before, she had not thought to plan with Matilda for the somewhat essential item of food!

She sat up.  What was she ever to do?  Three months of solitary confinement, with no arrangements for food!  Would Matilda have the sense to think of this, and if so would she have the adroitness to smuggle edibles in to her unnoticed?  Or was she to be starved out?

The revised plan had lost its first rose-tint.

She got up, and noiselessly foraged throughout her quarters.  The total of her gleaning was a box of forgotten chocolate bon-bons and a box of half-length tallow candles.  She had read that Esquimaux ate tallow, or its equivalent, and prospered famously upon it; but she deferred the candles in favor of the bon-bons, and breakfasted on half the box.

Then she went back to bed and read.  In the afternoon she ate the second half of the bon-bons.

Also in the afternoon she discovered that the bliss of lying abed, which she had thought would be exhaustless, had inexplicably become transmitted into boredom.  And yet she dared not move about, save with a caution that amounted almost to pain; for she had heard Jack and Mary and Mr. Pyecroft pass and re-pass her door, and she knew that any slight noise on her part might result in disastrous betrayal.