‘I meant to.  But after all, I had to stay longer.’

‘Oh well, it’s nothing to me.’

They had not even shaken hands, and now felt no desire to correct the omission, which was at first involuntary.  Horace seemed to have lost all the amiability of his nature; he looked about him with restless, excited eyes.

‘Are you in a hurry?’ asked his sister, head erect.

’No hurry that I know of.—­You haven’t heard what’s been going on?’

‘Where?’

’Of course it won’t interest you.  There’s something about you I can’t understand.  Is it father’s will that has spoilt your temper, and made you behave so strangely?’

‘It is not my temper that’s spoilt.  And as for behaving strangely—.’  She made an effort to command herself.  ’Sit down, Horace, and let me know what is the matter with you.  Why we should be unfriendly, I really can’t imagine.  I have suffered from ill health, that’s all.  I’m sorry I behaved in that way when you talked of coming to Falmouth; it wasn’t meant as you seem to think.  Tell me what you have to tell.’

He could not take a reposeful attitude, but, after struggling with some reluctance, began to explain the agitation that beset him.

’Mrs. Damerel has done something I didn’t think any woman would be capable of.  For months she has been trying to ruin Fanny, and now it has come—­she has succeeded.  She made no secret of wanting to break things off between her and me, but I never thought her plotting could go as far as this.  Fanny has run away—­gone to the Continent with a man Mrs. Damerel introduced to her.’

‘Perhaps they are married,’ said Nancy, with singular impulsiveness.

’Of course they’re not.  It’s a fellow I knew to be a scoundrel the first time I set eyes on him.  I warned Fanny against him, and I told Mrs. Damerel that I should hold her responsible if any harm came of the acquaintance she was encouraging between him and Fanny.  She did encourage it, though she pretended not to.  Her aim was to separate me and Fanny—­she didn’t care how.’

He spoke in a high, vehement note; his cheeks flushed violently, his clenched fist quivered at his side.

‘How do you know where she is gone?’ Nancy asked.

’She as good as told her sister that she was going to Brussels with some one.  Then one day she disappeared, with her luggage.  And that fellow—­Mankelow’s his name—­has gone too.  He lived in the same boarding-house with Mrs. Damerel.’

‘That is all the evidence you have?’

‘Quite enough,’ he replied bitterly.

’It doesn’t seem so to me.  But suppose you’re right, what proof have you that Mrs. Damerel had anything to do with it?  If she is our mother’s sister—­and you say there can be no doubt of it—­I won’t believe that she could carry out such a hateful plot as this.’

’What does it matter who she is?  I would swear fifty times that she has done it.  You know very well, when you saw her, you disliked her at once.  You were right in that, and I was wrong.’