"What, Nell!" he said, getting up as she entered. "We must have come home almost together. Where have you been, child?"
To his own ear his voice rang false, but she did not notice it. She did not meet his kiss. She did not see that he was looking at her with a fearful apprehension.
"What is the matter, Nell?" he stammered, noticing the alteration in her looks.
She came and stood beside him, seeming to tower above him.
"Father," she said, "I am not going to marry Robin. I want him to know at once."
"Not marry Robin!" This was something the General was unprepared for. "Not marry Robin! God bless my soul, Nell! It's very late for you to say such a thing—within three weeks of your wedding! And all the arrangements made! What will people say? What will the Dowager say? You can't play fast and loose with a man like that, Nell. Why, it will be the talk of the town."
He tried to work himself up to the old fretting and fuming, but there was no heartiness in it. Under the projecting eyebrows his old frostily-blue eyes had a scared look. But if he had been in such a passion as he had shown on a certain historic occasion when the regiment had nearly scattered before the approach of screaming Dervishes—a passion which had rallied the men and won Sir Denis his V.C.—it would have been all the same to Nelly.
"All that is perfectly immaterial," she said. "I am sorry for Robin and for Aunt Matilda. But all that will pass. I was mad to consent to the marriage. I am only glad that I came to my senses in time."
Was this Nelly?—this young, sure, inflexible creature! He stared at her in utter amazement.
"Supposing I were to say that you must go on now since you have gone so far, Nell?" he said, and felt at the same time the futility of the saying. "I never thought my girl would play so shabby a trick on Gerald's son. You know that people will laugh at Robin?"