"Don't you really care?"
Nan threw herself back in the boat with her face to the stars.
"Why, of course not," she declared, with regal indifference. "How can you
be so absurd?"
And in face of such sublime recklessness, he was obliged to be convinced.
CHAPTER IV
Nan's picnic on the lake was not concluded much before ten o'clock.
She ran home through the moonlight, bareheaded, whistling as carelessly
as a boy. Night and day were the same thing to her in the place in
which she had lived all her life. There was not one of the village folk
whom she did not know, not one for whom the doings of the wild Everards
did not provide food for discussion. For Nan undoubtedly was an Everard
still, her grand wedding notwithstanding. No one ever dreamed of applying
any other title to her than the familiar "Miss Nan" that she had borne
from her babyhood. There was, in fact, a general feeling that the unknown
husband of Miss Nan was scarcely worthy of the high honour that had been
bestowed upon him. His desertion of her on the very day succeeding the
wedding had been freely criticised, and in many quarters condemned out of
hand. No one knew the exact circumstances of the case, but all were
agreed in pronouncing Miss Nan's husband a defaulter.
That Miss Nan herself was very far from fretting over the situation was
abundantly evident, but this fact did not in any way tend to justify the
offender, of whom it was beginning to be opined round the bars of the
village inns that he was "one o' them queer sort of cusses that it was
best for women to steer clear of.
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