Twice, while her aunt and uncle were in the room,
Derby had looked at her with an expression that set Nina's heart
beating, but now they were alone it had entirely vanished and he kept
his head persistently turned away. She wondered how she could ever have
failed to find his profile splendid. But he seemed so detached, so
bafflingly absorbed, that all the old ache that she had felt that day
when he had advised her to marry Billy Dalton--and since--came
suffocatingly back. The old doubt suddenly gripped her--could her aunt
be mistaken?
Finally, it came to her, intuitively, that her whole future was hanging
on this moment, and the impulse was overwhelming to forget that she was
the woman. It seemed that she must herself force the issue and end the
doubt, at all hazards--this doubt which hammered at the door of her
intellect and yet which her heart refused stubbornly to accept.
"Jack"--she tried hard to carry out her resolve not to let the false
pride of a moment perhaps spoil her whole life; but the inborn reserve
of generations of womanhood rebelled. In her uncertainty and anguish
each moment of silence seemed weighted into leaden despair, but she was
utterly unable to say what she had intended. At last her lips parted
and, like the wail of a lost child, "Jack----" she cried. It was all she
could say before her eyes filled and a queer little gulp came into her
throat; then, with superhuman effort yet hardly articulate, came the
whisper, "H-ave you n-othing to say--to me?"
All at once he turned and looked at her--looked again and caught her by
the shoulders.
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