"You're not frightened, are you, Nan?" asked Roger, when the rest of the household had tactfully left them alone together a few minutes before his departure.
He spoke very gently and tenderly. Like most men, he was at his best just now, when he had so newly gained the promise of the woman he loved--rather humble, even a little awed at the great gift bestowed upon him, and thinking only of Nan and of what he would do to compass her happiness in the future when she should be his wife.
"No, I'm not frightened." replied Nan. "I think"--quietly--"I shall be so--safe--with you."
"Safe?"--emphatically. "I should think you would be safe! I'm strong enough to guard my wife from most dangers, I think!"
The violet-blue eyes meeting his held a somewhat weary smile. It was beginning already--that inevitable noncomprehension of two such divergent natures. They did not sense the same things--did not even speak the same language. Trenby took everything quite literally--the obvious surface meaning of the words, and the delicate nuances of speech, the significant inflections interwoven with it, meant about as much to him as the frail Venetian glass, the dainty porcelain figures of old Bristol or Chelsea ware, would mean to the proverbial bull in a china-shop.
"And now, sweetheart," he went on, rather conventionally, "when will you come to see my mother? She will be longing to meet you."
Nan shuddered inwardly. Of course she knew one always _did_ ultimately meet one's future mother-in-law, but the prompt and dutiful way in which Roger brought out his suggestion seemed like a sentence culled from some Early Victorian book. Certainly it was altogether alien to Nan's ultra-modern, semi-Bohemian notions.
"Suppose you come to lunch to-morrow? I should like you to meet her as soon as possible."
There was something just the least bit didactic in the latter part of the sentence, a hint of the proprietary note. Nan recoiled from it instinctively.
"No, not to-morrow," she exclaimed hastily. "I'm going over to see Aunt Eliza--Mrs. McBain, you know--and I can't put it off. I haven't been near her for a fortnight, and she'll he awfully offended if I don't go."
"Then it must be Tuesday," said Roger, with an air of making a concession.