At the same time, there was no reason, now that her health was restored, that she should not join him, and he was writing to ask her father to take her out to him.

He would meet them at Cape Town, and if the Colonel cared to do so he would be very pleased if he would spend a few months with them.
The plan was expressed concisely but with absolute kindness.

Nevertheless there was about the letter a certain tone of mastery which gave Nan very clearly to understand that the writer thereof did not expect to be disappointed.

It was emphatically the letter of a husband to his wife, not of a lover to his beloved.
She looked up from it with a very blank face.
"My dear dad!" she ejaculated.

"What can he be thinking of ?" Colonel Everard smiled somewhat ruefully.
"You, apparently," he said, with an effort to speak lightly.