Then came a crunching on the cobbles of the path below, and a soft call of “Nancy!”
Not I; I wasn’t going down.
“Nancy!”—more urgently. “I say!”
No! Let him think what he liked of me—rude, obstinate, childish, or sullen—as long as he only didn’t guess why I didn’t mean to go down, or even look out the window to answer him. I couldn’t face it now. Not with what my own lips had first told me of the thing which I had to hold away from me, at arm’s length, for as long as I had the strength.
“Nancy!”
Evidently he was set on saying something to me—but whether it was about yesterday morning or yesterday afternoon I didn’t care. I was equally set on his not having the chance. Now I was afraid this chance would happen after lunch, and I was grateful to that which prevented his taking me up to Holyhead and seeing me off by the Euston mail alone.
I rejoiced over the timely and snorting arrival of that magenta-coloured “auto” of the Charriers, bringing over Monsieur with some more of his business-documents, and Mademoiselle with business that a child might guess at.
I leaped at their proffered lift of luggage and all, back to Holyhead Station, and the four of us went off together.
Then, sitting beside this French coquette, who seemed bent on seeming sweet to me—(Why? I suppose because the girl to whom he is engaged feels that it’s “in the picture” to be generous to the girl he has “engaged”)—my heart sank, and I wished I hadn’t accepted. We were speeding along far too fast along the level road towards the purple hump of the Holyhead mountain. We should be there too soon. Heavens! There’d be half an hour to wait at the station, and he could get what he wanted to say in then....