Philippa Renshaw shrugged her shoulders. “You may love being on it. That’s a different thing. It remains to be seen how you like being near it.”
“I like it always, everywhere,” repeated Nance obstinately, “and I’m afraid of nothing it can do to me!”
They overtook the others at this point and Mrs. Renshaw turned rather querulously to her daughter.
“Don’t talk to her about the sea, Philippa—I know that’s what you’re doing.”
The girl with the figure of a boy let her eyes meet Adrian’s and Nance felt the dead weight in her heart grow more ice-cold than before, as she watched the effect of that look upon her lover.
It was Rachel who broke the tension. “It wasn’t so very long ago,” she said, “that Rodmoor was quite an inland place. There are houses now, they say, and churches under the water. And it swallows up the land all the time, inch by inch. The sand-dunes are much nearer the town, I am sure of that, and the mouth of the river, too, than when I lived here in old days.”
Mrs. Renshaw looked by no means pleased at this speech.
“Well,” she said, “we must be getting home for dinner. Shall we walk through the park, Philippa? It’s the nicest way—if the grass isn’t too wet.”
In the general chorus of adieus that followed, Nance was not surprised when Sorio bade good-night to her as well as to the others. He professed to be going to the station to meet the Mundham train.