"Try to believe they wouldn't be!" Mallory uttered a short laugh.
"I'm afraid it's no case for 'believing.' It's hard fact." Nan remained silent.

There was an undertone so bitter in his voice that she felt as though her poor little efforts at consolation were utterly trivial and futile to meet whatever tragedy lay behind the man's curt speech.

It seemed as though he read her thought, for he turned to her quickly with that charming smile of his.
"You'd make a topping pal," he said.

And Nan knew that in some indefinable way she had comforted him.
They drove on in silence for some time and when, later on, they began to talk again it was on ordinary commonplace topics, by mutual consent avoiding any by-way that might lead them back to individual matters.

The depths which had been momentarily stirred settled down once more into misleading tranquillity.
In due course they arrived at Abbencombe, and the car purred up to the station, where the Chattertons' limousine, sent to meet Nan, still waited for her.