"Remember, Tom—you promised to say nothing until I gave you leave. You're not fair..."
"But you do love me?"
Nancy was silent.
"There is nothing between you and the old Frenchman—no mystery?"
There was no reply. Nancy sat with compressed lips and drawn brows, gazing fixedly at the distant House on the Dunes at the end of their road. For a long while they drove on in silence.
At the House on the Dunes they chatted for a while with old Mrs. Meath, who lived there alone with a maid-of-all-work. She was a source of much anxiety to Mrs. Frost, who sent several times each week to learn if all was going well. But Mrs. Meath was a Quaker and apparently never gave a thought to loneliness or fear.
"They will never guess," she said to Nancy and Tom as they sat in the tiled kitchen talking with her, "what I am going to do."
"Not going to leave the House on the Dunes, Mrs. Meath?"
"Deary me! no; but I am going to take a boarder."
"Really?—you are setting up to rival the Inn, eh?" said Tom.