With a shamefaced smile at my own foolishness, I got out my diary, and searched through it for some mention of Nugent on the days on which I remembered to have met him. But its bald and unimaginative record had chronicled no description of him beyond one pithy entry after the first day’s hunting—
“Mr. O’Neill piloted me. Dull and conceited.”
I remembered quite well the satisfaction with which I had permitted myself this rare expression of opinion; and I laughed outright as I thought how the girl who had written that would have despised her future self, if she could have foreseen in what spirit it would again be referred to. “Dull and conceited!” Had he or I changed most since that was written? I pondered over it, and came to the conclusion that it was with him that the change had begun. I should never have altered my opinion of him, if he had not shown that he had altered his of me.
I slowly thought over the various stages of our acquaintance, ending, as I had begun, with the events of yesterday. Woven in through all my reflections had been a little thread of uncertainty and dissatisfaction. What was the question that had been interrupted by Willy’s inopportune arrival? Could he really have thought I was engaged to my cousin? It seemed at first as if he had suspected it; but I knew that what I had said was enough to convince him that he had been mistaken—that I was sure of, from the way he had said good-bye. Well, I should certainly see him to-morrow; perhaps even to-day, I thought, and trembled at the thought.
When I went down to breakfast, I found that Willy had finished his. This was practically our first tête-à-tête since he had come home. Last night he had not come into the drawing-room after dinner, and I had gone to my room early. He was standing in the window, reading a letter, when I came into the room, and, with a keen dart of memory, my first morning at Durrus came into my mind. He had been standing in just that position as I came into breakfast that first morning after my arrival, and I well remembered the smile with which he had come forward to meet me. The contrast of his present greeting jarred painfully on me, and dashed a little the serenity in which I had tried to enwrap myself. The old boyish friendliness was all gone, and in its place was a spasmodic, constrained politeness, which was so foreign to his nature, and so hardly assumed, that it seemed to me the most pitiful thing in the world. I came near wishing that I had never seen Nugent, and I thought with humiliation of what Willy would feel when he knew how much my denials about him had been worth.
“I breakfasted earlier to-day,” he said awkwardly. “I have to be in Moycullen at eleven o’clock. Is there anything I can do for you there?”
“No, thank you. But, Willy”—as he was leaving the room—“that reminds me, the O’Neills want me to ride with them to Mount Prospect to-morrow. Could I have Blackthorn?”
“Of course you can,” he answered gruffly; “you know you’ve only to order the horse when you want him.”
“Would you come with us?” I went on timidly.
“No, thanks; I’m very busy about the farm just now.”