But Diana was in no mood for light messages; rather unaccountably, she received it with impatience.
"O, he is simply odious!" she exclaimed. "I have no patience with him. Why can't he behave like an ordinary man just once in a way? Going off at sunrise, and never stopping to say good-bye! It is downright rudeness, and there is no reason why he should conclude he can be as rude as he likes with impunity. You don't seem to mind his bearishness, Meryl? but I hope you have spirit enough to resent his casual departure."
Meryl was rather pale, but she managed to reply lightly, "I can't see why you seem so surprised. He is only acting as he has done all along. It is his affair, whether he keeps it up to the last, or suddenly changes altogether and becomes the polite, conventional society man. Personally, it would have surprised me far more to see the change."
"O, you're just shielding him," with impatient disdain; "I suppose because he happens to be rather good to look at. But I call it rude; just plain, unvarnished rudeness to go off like that for some trumped-up reason and never say good-bye to you and me. I hope I shall meet more amiable Rhodesians elsewhere, and I should like to have a chance to tell him so." Then she rattled off into another subject, leaving neither Meryl nor her uncle any necessity to help the conversation, for which, in their secret hearts, they were deeply grateful.
And perhaps Diana's clever little head made an effort which had no appearance of an effort; for like the two brothers who had been respectively her father and her uncle, very little transpiring in her immediate circle ever escaped her notice.
XVI
"THE SHIP OF FOOLS"
Meryl had not been long with the Grenvilles before Ailsa's sympathetic nature divined that some shadow seemed to be brooding upon the girl's spirit. She was so pensive and silent, with sad eyes turned often to some far horizon full of wistful thought. And then perhaps suddenly she would make an effort and be unusually gay, but the gaiety was not spontaneous nor the laughter frank.
In truth, it had been a weary two days and nights for Meryl, since the early morning when her father and Diana, with the engineer and Stanley, rode away, after escorting her to the Mission Station and leaving her there to await their return. It was as though the very abruptness of Carew's departure had crystallised all her wavering, uncertain thoughts, and told her bluntly what he was to her. Before she had been half dreaming; now she knew.