“Nance!” said the young girl suddenly. “Nance! Come here. Come over to me. I want to tell you something.”
The elder sister obeyed. It was not long—for hard though it may be to break silence, these things are quickly spoken—before she knew the worst. Linda, with her arms clutched tightly round her, and her face hidden, confessed that she was with child.
Nance leapt to her feet. “I’ll go to him,” she cried, “I’ll go to him at once! Of course he must marry you now. He must! He must! I’ll go to him. I’ll go to Hamish. I’ll go to Adrian—to Fingal! He must marry you, Linda. Don’t cry, little one. I’ll make it all right. It shall be all right! I’ll go to him this very evening.”
A faint flush appeared in Linda’s pale cheeks and a glimmer of hope in her eyes. “Do you think, possibly, that there’s any chance? Can there be any chance? But no, no, darling, I know there’s none—I know there’s none.”
“What makes you so sure, Linda?” asked Nance, rapidly changing her dress, and as she did so pouring herself out a glass of milk.
“It’s Philippa,” murmured the other in a low voice. “Oh, how I hate her! How I hate her!” she continued, in a sort of moaning refrain, twisting her long hair between her fingers and tying the ends of it into a little knot.
“Well, I’m off, my dear,” cried Nance at length, finishing her glass of milk and adjusting her hat-pins. “I’m going straight to find him. I may pick up Adrian on the way, or I may not. It rather depends. And I may have a word or two with Philippa. The chances are that I shall overtake her if I go now. She can’t have waited much longer down by the river.”
Linda rushed up to her and clasped her in her arms. “My own darling!” she murmured, “how good you are to me—how good you are! Do you know, I was afraid to tell you this—afraid that you’d be angry and ashamed and not speak to me for days. But, oh, Nance, I do love him so much! I love him more than my life—more than my life even now!”
Nance kissed her tenderly. “Make yourself some tea, my darling, won’t you? We’ll have supper whenever I come back, and that’ll be—I hope—with good news for you! Good-bye, my sweetheart! Say your prayers for me, and don’t be frightened however late I am. And have a good tea!”
She kissed her again, and with a final wave of the hand and an encouraging smile, she left the room and ran down the stairs. She walked slowly to the top of the street, her head bent, wondering in her mind whether she should ask Adrian to go with her to the Renshaws’ or whether she should go alone.