“He will! He will!” cried Nan excitedly. “I feel a conviction. He will get it, and you will offer Ned his place. It would be defying Providence to do anything else. Oh, how happy I am—how pleased he will be! And is it a pretty house in a garden, big enough for us all to go down and stay with him? How soon will it be settled, so that I can tell them at home?”
So determinedly confident did she appear as to the success of her scheme, that it seemed an ungenerous act to pour cold water on such generous enthusiasm, and each man registered a mental vow to satisfy her, if it were within the bounds of possibility.
As his custom was, Gervase escorted the visitor on a tour of inspection round the garden before she took her departure, and took advantage of the tête-à-tête to express a more ardent sympathy with the home trouble than he had cared to show in his uncle’s presence. The broken engagement had been no surprise to him, for he had summed up the character of Miss Lilias too accurately to have any trust in her stability; but it had evidently come as a shock to Nan’s unsuspecting mind.
“She says now that she has been thinking of it for some time, and he says he was dissatisfied; yet neither of them spoke a word, but went drifting on and on, waiting upon chance. I suppose they would have married each other if this crash had not come, and regretted it for the rest of their lives. I can’t understand such behaviour. If I feel a thing, I can’t bottle it up, I simply cannot; out it must come, whatever is the consequence. And when it comes to pretending to love a person when you don’t, and to be happy when you are not, that is worse than anything else. It’s positively wicked!”
“I agree with you. I have always maintained that absolute honesty should be practised in these affairs between a man and a woman, and that far less trouble would arise if each side spoke out plainly as to what was in their hearts. I go perhaps a little further in my views than most people, but long ago I made myself a promise that when my own hour came I would act up to my convictions, and I am not going to draw back now. Months ago, Nan, you walked into my uncle’s room to meet me, and I knew—I think I knew almost as soon as I met your eyes—that here was a new specimen of her kind, a woman who would play a great part in my life. I had never known that feeling before, but it has grown in strength ever since that day, until now it is difficult to imagine my life without it. You have engrossed all my thoughts—all my hopes—”
Nan stood still and stared at him. The colour had left her cheeks, and her eyes were wide and startled. She laid her hand on her throat and gave a little choking gasp.
“Do you mean that you—that you are—in love—with me?”
The amazement in her tone, the incredulity of that “me” was touching in its humility, and Gervase’s smile was very tender as he replied—
“I think I am. I am, at least, travelling very fast in that direction. Does that alarm you so very much? Does it distress you? Have you no feeling of friendship to offer me in return?”
“Friendship! Oh yes, but not,”—Nan gulped over the word in wild embarrassment—“the other thing! It’s too soon. I have just left the schoolroom—I have just put up my hair. I couldn’t think of such a thing for years and years, until I am old, and have got some sense!”