‘Oh, Captain Dartrey!’

‘Drop the captain.  Dartrey will do.’

‘How could I!’

‘You’re not wanting in courage, Nesta.’

‘Hardly for that!’

‘By-and-by, then.’

‘Though I could not say Mr. Fenellan.’

‘You see; Dartrey, it must be.’

‘If I could!’

’But the fellow is not a captain:  and he is a friend, an old friend, very old friend:  he’ll be tipped with grey in a year or two.’

‘I might be bolder then.’

’Imagine it now.  There is no disloyalty in your calling your friends by their names.’

Her nature rang to the implication.  ‘I am not bound.’  Dartrey hung fast, speculating on her visibly:  ‘I heard you were?’

‘No.  I must be free.’

‘It is not an engagement?’

’Will you laugh?—­I have never quite known.  My father desired it:  and my desire is to please him.  I think I am vain enough to think I read through blinds and shutters.  The engagement—­what there was—­has been, to my reading, broken more than once.  I have not considered it, to settle my thoughts on it, until lately:  and now I may suspect it to be broken.  I have given cause—­if it is known.  There is no blame elsewhere.  I am not unhappy, Captain Dartrey.’

’Captain by courtesy.  Very well.  Tell me how Nesta judges the engagement to be broken?’

She was mentally phrasing before she said:  ‘Absence.’

‘He was here yesterday.’

All that the visit embraced was in her expressive look, as of sight drawing inward, like our breath in a spell of wonderment.  ’Then I understand; it enlightens me.

My own mother!—­my poor mother! he should have come to me.  I was the guilty person, not she; and she is the sufferer.  That, if in life were direct retribution! but the very meaning of having a heart, is to suffer through others or for them.’

‘You have soon seen that, dear girl,’ said Dartrey.

‘So, my own mother, and loving me as she does, blames me!’ Nesta sighed; she took a sharp breath.  ‘You? do you blame me too?’

He pressed her hand, enamoured of her instantaneous divination and heavenly candour.

But he was admonished, that to speak high approval would not be honourable advantage taken of the rival condemning; and he said:  ’Blame?  Some think it is not always the right thing to do the right thing.  I’ve made mistakes, with no bad design.  A good mother’s view is not often wrong.’

‘You pressed my hand,’ she murmured.

That certainly had said more.

‘Glad to again,’ he responded.  It was uttered airily and was meant to be as lightly done.

Nesta did not draw back her hand.  ‘I feel strong when you press it.’  Her voice wavered, and as when we hear a flask sing thin at the filling, ceased upon evidence of a heart surcharged.  How was he to relax the pressure!—­he had to give her the strength she craved:  and he vowed it should be but for half a minute, half a minute longer.