CHAPTER 3
Since his return he had seen no one, and none of his friends knew where he had been. A call from some stray Hodiernal would be very unseasonable this Monday afternoon; but probably they were all enjoying their elegant leisure in regions remote from town. As the hour of Nancy’s arrival drew near, he sat trying to compose himself—with indifferent success. At one moment his thoughts found utterance, and he murmured in a strange, bewildered tone—‘My wife.’ Astonishing words! He laughed at their effect upon him, but unmirthfully. And his next murmur was—‘The devil!’ A mere ejaculation, betokening his state of mind.
He reached several times for his pipe, and remembered when he had touched it that the lips with which he greeted Nancy ought not to be redolent of tobacco. In outward respect, at all events, he would not fall short.
Just when his nervousness was becoming intolerable, there sounded a knock. The knock he had anticipated—timid, brief. He stepped hastily from the room, and opened. Nancy hardly looked at him, and neither of them spoke till the closing of two doors had assured their privacy.
‘Well, you had no difficulty in finding the place?’
‘No—none at all.’
They stood apart, and spoke with constraint. Nancy’s bosom heaved, as though she had been hastening overmuch; her face was deeply coloured; her eyes had an unwonted appearance, resembling those of a night-watcher at weary dawn. She cast quick glances about the room, but with the diffidence of an intruder. Her attitude was marked by the same characteristic; she seemed to shrink, to be ashamed.
‘Come and sit down,’ said Tarrant cheerfully, as he wheeled a chair.
She obeyed him, and he, stooping beside her, offered his lips. Nancy kissed him, closing her eyes for the moment, then dropping them again.
‘It seems a long time, Nancy—doesn’t it?’