Nelly did not answer a word. She was struck dumb. That other day, under the lime-trees, he had certainly said not a word about India. He had not, indeed, said all which the opportunity might have justified him in saying. He had been unsatisfactory, and had made a very poor use of the opportunity. But still he had not so much as hinted at anything which could explain this. She sat in her corner, bending towards him a little, as she had been before he made this startling intimation. What could it mean? Could he intend to ask her to go there with him? Nelly’s heart gave a sudden bound at the thought. She was so adventurous and eager for change that India itself would not have frightened her. Could that be what he meant? She did not change her position, but sat still, turning towards him in a listening attitude, with her eyes cast down, and a certain sharpness of expectation in her face. The idea was quite new and startling, but it was not unpleasant. She waited, with a tingling in her ears, a sudden sense of quickened pulsation and tightened breath, for the next words he should say. But at that moment dumbness, too, fell upon Frank. His lips grew dry; his tongue clave to his mouth. He turned a little away, and began to play unconsciously with the little cane in his hand, flicking his boot with it. It seemed to him as if all his powers of speech were exhausted and not a word would come. If only there might be a stoppage at some station, or an accident, or anything! He would have welcomed any incident that would have interrupted this horrible pause. And not a word would come to his lips. He tried to make up some ordinary question about the flower-show, but it would not do. He sat in a frightful consciousness,--afraid to look at her, wondering what she was thinking of it, how she would receive it. And the train was one of those nice, quick express trains, which stop only at Slowley junction. The poor young fellow thought he would have gone mad with that awful pause and stoppage of talk, and the everlasting iron murmur and clank of the wheels. It was full five minutes before any one spoke, and that at such a time, of course, seemed as a year. Then it was Nelly who resumed the conversation, in a tone clear and distinct, with a modulation of contempt in it which set Frank’s nerves on edge. ‘I do not see why it should not be cheerful work,’ she said; ‘no doubt you like it or you would not have done it; but it is sudden surely, Mr. Renton?’ And Frank, who did not look at her, who was busy still with his cane and his boot, felt that she was looking steadily at him.