She wore an old dress, much older than anybody would have guessed from its appearance, since Ethel's fingers were gifted in the art of renovation. The shape of her face was that "short oval" which novelists are now so careful to distinguish from the unlovely "long oval." Brown hair was massed on the top of her head, straying over the brow, and brown fringes subdued the sparkling sunny eyes. The features could not be called good, and it was commonly a pale face, with none of Anice's quick changes of hue. Nigel, however, could never think that anything was wanting in that direction. He would not have had a line or a tint altered.
He had not spoken of his love to any human being. With all Nigel's frankness, there were reserve-depths below. He could not readily talk of the things which he felt most intensely. Some people no doubt can; but Nigel could not.
Whether others had guessed his secret before he left home, he had no means of knowing. Sometimes he thought that his mother had; and sometimes also he felt sure that his trip round the world had been arranged for him, not only on account of his health, but in reference to this. He had a strong impression that Mr. Browning had desired for him the test of a year's separation from Ethel. But these ideas he kept to himself. The year's separation had been lived through, and had made no difference. Ethel was dearer to him than ever.
"Father, did you say somebody was come? Who is it? Oh!—Nigel!!"
The lighting up of her face was worth seeing; and the little gasp of joy between those two words was worth hearing. Nobody thought anything of her delight; for had not she and Nigel been close friends from childhood? And was it not natural?
But to Nigel, this moment made up for all the long months of absence. He held her hand tightly for three seconds, how tightly he did not know; and the touch of those little fingers scattered to the winds all his previous resolutions. He stepped into the house.
"Nigel himself! Yes, I found him outside the garden gate. Actually protesting that he had come for a look, and didn't mean to be seen. Here, Lance, my boy, help me off with this coat. That's it. Come, Nigel, come and be inspected. My dear, I've brought an old friend, but you'll hardly recognise him. Eh?"
Mrs. Elvey, knitting slowly in an easy-chair, was a contrast to her sunny-tempered husband and daughter. Her face offered as good a specimen of the bony "long oval" as Ethel's of the shorter and more rounded type; and there was about it a somewhat unhappy look of self-pity and of discontented invalidism. No doubt she was not strong and often did suffer much. But no doubt also many in Mrs. Elvey's place would have been brighter, braver, less of a weight upon others' spirits, more ready to respond to others' interests. She welcomed Nigel kindly, but with the limp and listless air of one who really had so many trials of her own that she could not be expected to care much whom she did or did not see.
"Hardly up to the mark to-day you see—tired-out, poor dear!" explained the Rector, himself a hard-worked and often weary man; but he was counted strong, and few gave him a word of sympathy on that score. He looked solicitously at his wife and then turned to the young man. "Come; I must see what has been the effect upon you of it all—Japan, Timbuctoo, and the rest! Eh, Ethel? Is he the better or the worse?"
"Pollard thinks it a matter for congratulation that I have not become food for cannibals," laughed Nigel.