CHAPTER XVIII
Whatever it was she had heard or not heard from Germany, Nan presently unpacked her trunk and installed herself in a flat in Westminster, with a servant, two aged Belgian refugee women, and the grand-son of one of them, a little boy of five.
That for some time was the extent of Napier's knowledge of what was going on.
For the rest of that bewildering, tormenting autumn he had, with one or two exceptions, only fleeting and infrequent glimpses of the girl. And this in spite of the fact that she and Madge had set up an intimate friendship. Until a certain day in December, the two were often together both at the Lowndes Square house and at Nan's flat. The Belgian women, Napier gathered, were a sore trial. But that is another story.
Napier knew quite well he hadn't his lack of sympathy with her Belgian complications to thank for the sense of gêne, of being on new and uncertain ground in such encounters with Nan as the times permitted. Was it because she knew, and resented, his having prevented her going to Germany in Greta's wake? Or was it because some inkling had reached her as to the rifling of Greta's room at Lamborough? Madge couldn't have resisted the temptation to tell Nan the whole story by now. And why should Napier alone keep silence? Why, anyway, keep up this fiction of Greta's impeccability? "I'll have it out with Nan at the very first opportunity!"
Napier was almost happy, for a time, anticipating his first opportunity.
It came after a highly uncomfortable luncheon at Lowndes Square, the occasion of Julian's last appearance in that house where, ever since boyhood, he had been so welcome.
Ten minutes after the older people had sat down, Madge came in, bringing Julian and Nan Ellis. The girls wore that look of happy responsibility that had begun to shine on young faces in England.
"I've joined the Emergency Corps," Madge announced.
"Your new excuse for being late for meals," Sir William exclaimed, with a brusquerie intended to strike a few enlivening sparks out of Wildfire. And she actually let it pass.