It was Nan who achieved the impossible. "Brr! I'm cold," she announced. "If you weren't too grand, Mr. Napier, Madge and I would race you to those rocks."
Mr. Napier wasn't too grand, and Miss Madge was elated by her victory. "I'll race you back again," she cried, again off like the wind.
They sat down on the rocks where Madge left them. For several moments there was no sound but the swish and rattle of pebbles as they swept up shore in the advance, and then, deserted by the force behind, fell back a little, clinging for a moment to the skirts of the retreating wave.
Nan, with her white veil cloud-like round her face, looked at the track of light across the water. The moon wore a cloud round her face, too, but she looked in and out. The girl was very still.
"Oh, my dear! my dear!" Napier's heart cried so loud that in a kind of terror he fell upon audible speech. "It is the most wonderful night I ever—" and he stopped. His voice sounded strange. As she turned from the moon-path on the water to meet Napier's look fastened on her, he saw that her eyes had brought away some of the restlessness as well as some of the glitter of the sea. The adorable gentleness in them had given place to a critical, sharp, little glance that affected Napier like a breath from a glacier.
"Sir William seems immensely devoted to you—" To his over-sensitive ear she seemed to imply that being devoted to Gavan Napier implied a singular stretch of charity. Nor would she accept his silence. As though he must himself share this view of his scant deserts. "Don't you think it very nice of Sir William to let you go off on a holiday at such a time as this?"
"Very nice indeed."
She sat with her chin in her hand, her face upturned again. But the soft rapture was gone, gone utterly. "Julian is looking very tired, don't you think?" she said.
"I thought he did look tired."
"He is going to help Mr. Wilkins.