Meekly, for a long second, Nancy drew the black curtains of her eyes, murmuring from out the friendly gloom: 

“It’s very good of you, Allan!”

Then, before he could tell reasons for his pleasing, which she divined he was about to do, the curtains were up and the eyes wide open to him with a question about Bernal.

He turned to the house and pointed up to the two open windows of the study, in and out of which the warm breeze puffed the limp white curtains.

“He’s there, poor chap!  He was able to get that far for the first time yesterday, leaning on me and Clytie.”

“And to think I never knew he was sick until we came from town last night.  I’d surely have left the old school and come before if I’d heard.  I wouldn’t have cared what Aunt Bell said.”

“Eight weeks down, and you know we found he’d been sick long before he found it out himself—­walking typhoid, they called it.  He came home from college with me Easter week, and Dr. Merritt put him to bed the moment he clapped eyes on him.  Said it was walking typhoid, and that he must have been worrying greatly about something, because his nervous system was all run down.”

“And he was very ill?”

“Doctor Merritt says he went as far as a man can go and get back at all.”

“How dreadful—­poor Bernal!  Oh, if he had died!”

“Out of his head for three weeks at a time—­raving fearfully.  And you know, he’s quite like an infant now—­says the simplest things.  He laughs at it himself.  He says he’s not sure if he knows how to read and write.”

“Poor, dear Bernal!”

With some sudden arousing he studied her face swiftly as she spoke, then continued: 

“Yes, Bernal’s really an awfully good chap at bottom.”  He turned again to look up at the study windows.  “You know, I intend to stand by that fellow always—­no matter what he does!  Of course, I shall not let his being my brother blind me to his faults—­doubtless we all have faults; but I tell you, Nancy, a good heart atones for many things in a man’s make-up.”

She seemed to be waiting, slightly puzzled, but he broke off—­“Now I must hurry to mail these letters It’s good to be home for another summer.  You really do please me, Nance!”

She thought, as he moved off, that Allan was handsome—­more than handsome, indeed.  He left an immediate conviction of his superb vitality of body and mind, the incarnation of a spirit created to prevail.  Featured in almost faultless outline, of a character unconsciously, unaffectedly proclaiming its superior gravity among human masses, he was a planet destined to have many satellites and be satellite to none; an ego of genuine lordliness; a presence at once masterly and decorative.

And yet she was conscious of a note—­not positively of discord, but one still exciting a counter-stream of reflection.  She had observed that each time Allan turned his head, ever so little, he had a way of turning his shoulders with it:  the perfect head and shoulders were swung with almost a studied unison.  And this little thing had pricked her admiration with a certain needle-like suspicion—­a suspicion that the young man might be not wholly oblivious of his merits as a spectacle.