His glance was of perplexity—more perplexity than distress, Fulvia knew. She withdrew her hand, and sat down, and Nigel did not give the kiss permitted on those terms. He stood gazing at her, intensely serious.
"Has your holiday done you good?" she asked after a pause.
"Yes. I do not understand. Has anything happened to annoy you? What can you mean?"
"What I said—simply."
"I don't understand."
She held the arm of her chair fast. "Only—that we are brother and sister again. Reversion to the old order of things."
Dead silence followed. Nigel was motionless, leaning against the mantelpiece, his lips compressed, his whole face so grieved that she could not help the spring of a faint hope. What if, after all, she were mistaken?
"I do not understand," he said, for the third time. "There must be a cause. Either you have grown tired of me, or something has vexed you. Not—surely!—poor Mr. Carden-Cox's will? That would not be like you. Of course my share is entirely yours—would be, I mean, if—" and he hesitated. "Until this moment I have supposed that money coming to you and to me meant the same thing."
It was Fulvia's turn to look bewildered.
"Uncle Arthur's will!" she said. "Has he made a new one? He did talk of it, and I begged him not; but why should I mind?"