"You?..." she said. "You? ..." as if she could not believe her own eyes.
He said nothing. Suddenly speech seemed to have gone from him, but an expression in his face that was new to her quickened her pulses with a strange glad quickening.
After a moment he spoke, and it was as though his whole expression and figure stiffened.
"I did not expect to find you here," he said. "I was told you had gone with your father."
"Not I; Diana only." And her eyes fell, and a faint colour dyed her cheeks.
There was a moment's awkward pause: she remembering his unceremonious departure, wondering at his unceremonious return; he nonplussed at the trick Fate had played him, bringing him again, in spite of his decision, into the sphere of her beauty and her quiet charm.
"I was going to the Grenvilles'," he told her at last.
And suddenly a tiny smile played about the corners of Meryl's mouth. "I thought you could not possibly return from Segundi for a week?"
She looked away as she said it, so she could not see the swift contraction of his face and the swift gleam in his eyes. For one moment, of all things in heaven and earth, he felt suddenly that he wanted to take her in his arms and kiss her—roughly perhaps; yes, roughly and masterfully, for daring to aim her little shaft at him. Instead he replied gravely, "I had to come, because Mr. Jardine wanted Grenville's opinion on a particular native question, and it was a difficult matter to explain in a letter."
"Then I mustn't hinder you." And she stood aside. "Of course you are thinking of starting back to-night and are in a great hurry?"