Nan filled her lungs, and for the moment her soul sang praises; but for a moment only. If he was well, why had he never written? Her indignation had free play for the first time in all these months; she could better have borne to hear he had been ill, if only he were well again; for then she could have understood, then there would have been nothing to forgive.
"He was not only well," continued Mr. Merridew, with outward reluctance, not altogether an affectation, "but he was doing uncommonly well—far better than poor Ralph!"
Doing uncommonly well! And yet he could not write.
"And where is Ralph?" asked Nan, in a hard voice, and with that old hard light in her hazel eyes.
Mr. Merridew stood covered with a guilty confusion.
"Nan, would you see him if he came to see you?"
"Of course I would. Why not? I should like to see Ralph particularly."
"My dear, he didn't know; he was greatly afraid it would be just the other way. But since you say that, I must tell you he is within a hundred yards of where you stand, waiting in the road to know whether you would see him or not."
Nan was annoyed at this; it was giving romantic colour to a meeting which should have been perfectly natural and dispassionate on both sides; and on hers it was too dispassionate, and not natural enough, in consequence. Yet she wore a flush which might have flattered a less vain man than Ralph Devenish; and as for him he looked nicer than she had ever known him, in the shabby suit which was the best that remained of his Australian outfit, with the deep bronze upon his sallow face, and with inches added to his splendid whiskers. There was also, in him, a strange absence of arrière-pensée, psychologically more interesting than she dreamed; it was he who told her of Denis, unasked, in perhaps his second breath.
"Oh, I did decently," said Ralph, "and might have done really well had I stuck to it. But that cousin of mine—that's the man! He had some luck, though no more than he deserved; but when I came away he was the talk of his gully, to say the least. If he has realized half the prophecies I heard before I left he must be a wealthy man by this time."