Yet this was no matter to permit in one’s mind.  For Nancy of the lengthened skirts and the massed braids was now a person of reserves.  Even in that innocent insolence of first womanhood, with its tentatively malicious, half-conscious flauntings, she was one of reticences toward the world including herself, with petticoats of decorum draping the child’s anarchy of thought—­her luxuriant young emotions “done up” sedately with her hair.  She was now one to be cautious indeed of imputations so blunt as this concerning Allan.  Besides, how nobly he had spoken of Bernal.  Then she wondered why it should seem noble, for Nancy would be always a creature to wonder where another would accept.  She saw it had seemed noble because Bernal must have been up to some deviltry.

This phrase would not be Nancy’s—­only she knew it to be the way her uncle, for example, would translate Allan’s praise of his brother.  She hoped Bernal had not been very bad—­and wondered how bad.

Then she went to him.  Her first little knock brought no answer, nor could she be sure that the second did.  But she knew it was loud enough to be heard if the room were occupied, so she gently opened the door a crack and peeped in.  He lay on the big couch across the room under the open window, a scarlet wool dressing-gown on, and a steamer-rug thrown over the lower part of his body.  He seemed to be looking out and up to the tree that appeared above the window.  She thought he could not have heard her, but he called: 

“Clytie!”

She crossed the room and bent a little over to meet his eyes when he weakly turned his head on the pillow.

“Nancy!”

He began to laugh, sliding a thin hand toward one of hers.  The laugh did not end until there were tears in his eyes.  She laughed with him as a strong-voiced singer would help a weaker, and he tried to put a friendly force into his grip of the firm-fleshed little hand he had found.

“Don’t be flattered, Nance—­it’s only typhoid emotion,” he said at last, in a voice that sounded strangely unused.  “You don’t really overcome me, you know—­the sight of you doesn’t unman me as much as these fond tears might make you suspect.  I shall feel that way when Clytie brings my lunch, too.”  He smiled and drew her hand into both his own as she sat beside him.

“How plump and warm your hand is—­all full of little whispering pulses.  My hands are cold and drowsy and bony, and so uninterested!  Doesn’t fever bring forward a man’s bones in the most shameless way?”

“Oh, Bernal—­but you’ll soon have them decently hidden again—­indeed, you’re looking—­quite—­quite plump.”  She smiled encouragingly.  A sudden new look in his eyes made her own face serious again.

“Why, Nance, you’re rather lovely when you smile!”

She smiled.

“Only then?”

He studied her, while she pretended to be grave.

He became as one apart, giving her a long look of unbiassed appraisal.