“It is one reason, though I fancy his fiancée doesn’t allow him to stray very far from her side.”
“He is really in love with her, then.”
“Yes, or thinks he is, which amounts to the same thing. He has been devoted to her for some time.”
“Well, I think we must give him credit for listening to your warning,” Mrs. Corner remarked. “Not every young man would have.”
“Oh, he is a gentleman, and if he is thoughtless, it may be attributed to the youth of him. I’ve no fault to find with Marc as a friend, and wouldn’t discuss him with any less interested than yourselves, but I wanted you to know some of these things I have been telling you. I thought it was only due to you and to him, too. Where is Nan, Mrs. Corner?”
“I think she has gone off with some of the others for a walk, though I am not sure. I heard Ran ask her if she didn’t want to go,” the reply came.
“I think I’ll go meet them,” the doctor decided. Nan heard his footsteps on the plank walk which had been laid from her mother’s cabin to the larger one, and then in a few minutes she heard her mother say:
“Nan is not like herself this summer. She is moody, sometimes wildly gay, sometimes so pensive and sad it makes me afraid she is in trouble. She has always confided in me or in you, Helen, but this summer she seems almost to avoid us, and she goes off by herself a great deal. The girls have noticed it and it has hurt them a little.”
“Oh, dear, oh, dear!” Nan in her tent gave voice to a sigh.
“Have you ever thought”—Miss Helen hesitated, “that she had taken a fancy to Marcus Wells?”