For years Bob had loved her—loved her with a love which seemed to him all the greater because it appeared to be hopeless. As far as he could remember, Nancy had never given him one shadow of hope, never by word or action suggested that she cared for him in any way other than that of a lifelong playmate and friend. But then, as Bob reflected, Nancy was not like other girls. She was just a bundle of contradictions, and was, as her brothers had often said, "always breaking out in new places."
"Of course she'll not give me a chance to tell her what is in my heart," he reflected, as the car spun along a winding lane, the hedges of which rose high above his head; "but then I shall be with her. That's something, anyhow."
Presently the grey, lichen-covered, weather-beaten walls of Penwennack, Nancy's home, appeared, and Bob looked eagerly towards it as though he were trying to discover something.
"I hope nothing has turned up to hinder her," he reflected. "I know that Captain Trevanion is coming to dinner to-night, and people have it that the Admiral favours him as—as a——"
But he would not, even in his mind, finish the sentence that was born there. It was too horrible to contemplate, for to Bob, Nancy was the only girl in the world. She might be wilful and unreasonable, she might change her mind a dozen times in a day, she might at times seem flippant, and callous to the feelings of others, she might even be "a little bit of a flirt"—it made no difference to him. He knew that she had not a mean fibre in her nature, and that a more honourable girl never lived. Besides, even if she were, what in his moments of anger and chagrin he called her, she was still Nancy, the only girl he had ever loved and ever could love.
"Of course there's no chance for me," he reflected. "Trevanion is always there, and any one can see he's madly in love with her. He bears one of the oldest names in England too, he's heir to an old title, and he's Captain in one of the crack regiments. And Nancy loves a soldier. She comes of a fighting race, and thinks there's no profession in the world worthy of being compared with the army."
Bob Nancarrow was the only son of Dr. Nancarrow, a man much respected in St. Ia, but whom Admiral Tresize regarded as a crank. For Dr. Nancarrow was a Quaker, and although he did not parade his faith, it was well known that he held fast by those principles for which the Society of Friends is known. For one thing, he hated war. To him it was utterly opposed to the religion which England was supposed to believe, and he maintained that it seemed to him an impossibility for Christianity and war to be reconciled.
Admiral Tresize and he had had many arguments about this, and when the Boer War broke out, the condemnation of the doctor was so strong that it seemed almost inevitable that he and the Admiral should quarrel. Indeed, a coolness did spring up between them, and but for the fact that Mrs. Nancarrow had been a Miss Trelawney, and a direct descendant of the most important family in the county, it is probable that the coolness would have ended in an estrangement.
Bob, although he inherited his mother's looks, was greatly influenced by his father's opinions. Dr. Nancarrow died when he was quite a boy, yet his father's memory became one of the most potent influences in his life.
His mother sent him to Clifton College, and although to please her he joined the Officers' Training Corps, he held by his father's opinion that war and Christianity were a direct contradiction to each other.