"And he can never forgive it," Andrews added.
Then he went away, and Nina passed another sleepless night.
But he was back the next day by noon, to find her sitting in the same chair, with Tara lying at her feet, and the rain still beating its dismal tattoo on the window-panes. The room was in dusk.
She saw in his face that what she had feared, yet hoped against, he had brought her. She needed no word to confirm the dire thing told her by the duke. Poor Andrews seemed weighed down by the burden of his tidings. His expression was as grim and dour as the day.
"But do they know who he is?" It was her first question, and it relieved him of the bald announcement he had dreaded.
"They don't," he answered quickly, glad to get the first plunge over. "They haven't the faintest notion, apparently. I asked particularly."
"Poor Nibbetts," Nina sighed. "He doesn't look the typical nobleman. Yet when he was a young man there wasn't a smarter in all London."
"That South Sea life took it out of him, I suppose."
"And the butchering the Boers gave him."
"I wonder if his present fix can't be traced back to that?" suggested her friend, leaning down and patting the staghound's head. "There's such a thing as traumatic insanity, you know."