"As no Englishwoman could," he pursued. "We English aren't dramatic—it's bad form, you know."

"'We' English?" repeated Nan. "That hardly applies to you, does it?"

"My mother is French. But I'm very English in most ways," he returned quickly. Adding, with a good-humoured laugh: "I'm a disappointment to my mother."

Nan laughed with him out of sheer friendly enjoyment.

"Oh, surely not?" she dissented.

"But yes!" A foreign turn of phrase occasionally betrayed his half-French nationality. "But yes—I'm too English to please her. It's an example of the charming inconsistency of women. My mother loves the English; she chooses an Englishman for her husband. But she desires her son to be a good Frenchman! . . . She is delightful, my mother."

Dinner proceeded leisurely. Nan noticed that her companion drank very little and exhibited a most unmasculine lack of interest in the inspirations of the chef. Yet she knew intuitively that he was alertly conscious of the quiet perfection of it all. She dropped into a brief reverie of which the man beside her was the subject and from which his voice presently recalled her.

"I hope you're going to play to us this evening?"

"I expect so—if Kitty wishes it."

"That's sufficient command for most of those to whom she gives the privilege of friendship, isn't it?"

There was a quiet ring of sincerity in his voice as he spoke of Kitty, and Nan's heart warmed towards him.

"Yes," she assented eagerly. "One can't say 'no' to her. But I don't care for it—playing in a drawing-room after dinner."

"No." Again that quick comprehension of his. "The chosen few and the chosen moment are what you like."

"How do you know?" she asked impulsively.

"Because I think the 'how' and the 'where' of things influence you enormously."

"Don't they influence you, too?" she demanded.

"Oh, they count—decidedly. But I'm not a woman, nor an artiste, so I'm not so much at the mercy of my temperament."

The man's insight was extraordinarily keen, but touched with a little insouciant tenderness that preserved it from being critical in any hostile sense. Nan heaved a small sigh of contentment at finding herself in such an atmosphere.

"How well you understand women," she commented with a smile.

"It's very nice of you to say so, though I haven't got the temerity to agree with you."

Then, looking down at her intently, he added:

"I'm not likely, however, to forget that you've said it. . . . Perhaps I may remind you of it some day."

The abrupt intensity of his manner startled her. For the second time that evening the vivid personal note had been struck, suddenly and unforgettably.

The presidential uprising of the women at the end of dinner saved her from the necessity of a reply. Mallory drew her chair aside and, as he handed her the cambric web of a handkerchief she had let fall, she found him regarding her with a gently humorous expression in his eyes.

"This quaint English custom!" he said lightly. "All you women go into another room to gossip and we men are condemned to the society of one another! I'm afraid even I'm not British enough to appreciate such a droll arrangement. Especially this evening."

Nan passed out in the wake of the other women to while away in desultory small talk that awkward after-dinner interval which splits the evening into halves and involves a picking up of the threads—not always successfully accomplished—when the men at last rejoin the feminine portion of the party. And what is it, after all, but a barbarous relic of those times when a man must needs drink so much wine as to render himself unfit for the company of his womenkind?

"Well," demanded Kitty, "how do you like my lion?"

"Mr. Mallory? I didn't know he was a lion," responded Nan.

"Of course you didn't. You musicians never realise that the human Zoo boasts any other lions but yourselves."

Nan laughed.

"He didn't roar," she said apologetically, "so how could I know? You never told me about him."

"Well, he's just written what everyone says will be the book of the year—Lindley's Wife. It's made a tremendous hit."

"I thought that was by G. A. Petersen?"

"But Peter is G. A. Petersen. Only his intimate friends know it, though, as he detests publicity. So go don't give the fact away."

"I won't. You've read this new book, I suppose?"

"Yes. And you must. It's the finest study of a woman's temperament I've ever come across. . . . Goodness knows he's had opportunity enough to study the subject!"

Nan froze a little.

"Oh, is he a gay Lothario sort of person?" she asked coldly. "He didn't strike me in that light."

"No. He's not in the least like that. He's an ideal husband wasted."

Nan's eyes twinkled.

"Don't poach on preserved ground, Kitty. Marriages are made in heaven."

As she spoke the door opened to admit the men, and somebody claiming Kitty's attention at the moment she turned away without reply. For a few minutes the conversation became more general until, after a brief hum and stir, congenial spirits sought and found each other and settled down into little groups of twos and threes. Somewhat to Nan's surprise—and, although she would not have acknowledged it, to her annoyance—Peter Mallory ensconced himself next to Penelope, and Ralph Fenton, the singer, thus driven from the haven where he would be, came to anchor beside Nan.

"I've not seen you for a long time, Miss Davenant. How's the world been treating you?"

"Rather better than usual," she replied gaily. "More ha'pence than kicks for once in a way."

"You're booking up pretty deep for the winter, then, I suppose?"

Nan winced at the professional jargon. There was certain aspects of a musician's life which repelled her, more particularly the commercial side of it.

She responded indifferently.

"No. I haven't booked a single further engagement. The ha'pence are due to an avuncular relative who has a quite inexplicable penchant for an idle niece."

"My congratulations. Still, I hope this unexpected windfall isn't going to keep you off the concert platform altogether?"

"Not more than my own distaste for playing in public," she answered. "I'd much rather write music than perform."

"I can hardly believe you really dislike the publicity? The fascination of it grows on most of us."

"I know it does. I suppose that accounts for the endless farewell concerts a declining singer generally treats us to."

There was an unwonted touch of sharpness in her voice, and Fenton glanced at her in some surprise. It was unlike her to give vent to such an acid little speech. He could not know, of course, that Kitty's light-hearted remark concerning Peter Mallory's facilities for studying the feminine temperament was still rankling somewhere at the back of her mind.

"There's a big element of pathos in those farewell concerts," he submitted gently. "You pianists have a great advantage over the singer, whose instrument must inevitably deteriorate with the passing years."

Nan's quick sympathies responded instantly.

"I think I must be getting soured in my old age," she answered remorsefully. "What you say is dreadfully true. It's the saddest part of a singer's career. And I always clap my hardest at a farewell concert. I do, really!"

Fenton smiled down at her.

"I shall count on you, then, when I give mine."

Nan laughed.

"It's a solemn pledge—provided I'm still cumbering the ground. And now, tell me, are you singing here this evening?"

"I promised Mrs. Seymour. Would you be good enough to accompany?"

"I should love it. What are you going to sing?"

"Miss Craig and I proposed to give a duet."

"And here comes Kitty—to claim your promise, I guess."

A few minutes later the two singers' voices were blending delightfully together, while Nan's slight, musician's fingers threaded their way through intricacies of the involved accompaniment.

She was a wonderful accompanist—rarest of gifts—and when, at the end of the song, the restrained, well-bred applause broke out, Peter Mallory's share of it was offered as much to the accompanist as to the singers themselves.

"Stay where you are, Nan," cried Kitty, as the girl half rose from the music-seat. "Stay where you are and play us something."

Knowing Nan's odd liking for a dim light, she switched off most of the burners as she spoke, leaving only one or two heavily shaded lights still glowing. Mallory crossed the room so that, as he stood leaning with one elbow on the chimney-piece, he faced the player, on whose aureole of dusky hair one of the lights still burning cast a glimmer. While he waited for her to begin, he was aware of a little unaccustomed thrill of excitement, as though he were on the verge of some discovery.

Hesitatingly Nan touched a chord or two. Then without further preamble she broke into the strange, suggestive music which Penelope had described as representing the murder of a soul. It opened joyously, the calm beginnings of a happy spirit; then came a note of warning, the first low muttering of impending woe. Gradually the simple melody began to lose itself in a chaos of calamity, bent and swayed by wailing minor cadences through whose torrent of hurrying sound it could be heard vainly and fitfully trying to assert itself again, only to be at last weighed down, crushed out, by a cataclysm of despairing chords. Then, after a long, pregnant pause—the culminating silence of defeat—the original melody stole out once more, repeated in a minor key, hollow and denuded.

As the music ceased the lights sprang up again and Nan, looking across the room, met Mallory's gaze intently bent upon her. In his expression she could discern that by a queer gift of intuition he had comprehended the whole inner meaning of what she had been playing. Most people would have thought that it was a magnificent bit of composition, particularly for so young a musician, but Mallory went deeper and knew it to be a wonderful piece of self-revelation—the fruit of a spirit sorely buffeted.

Almost instantaneously Nan realised that he had understood, and she was conscious of a fierce resentment. She felt as though an unwarrantable intrusion had been made upon her privacy, and her annoyance showed itself in the quick compression of her mouth. She was about to slip away under cover of the applause when Mallory laid a detaining hand upon her arm.

"Don't go," he said. "And forgive me for understanding!"

Nan, sorely against her will, looked, up and met his eyes—eyes that were irresistibly kind and friendly. She hesitated, still anxious to escape.

"Please," he begged. "Don't leave me"—his lips endeavouring not to smile—"in high dudgeon. It's always seemed such an awful thing to be left in—like boiling oil."

Suddenly she yielded to the man's whimsical charm and sank down again into her chair.

"That's better." He smiled and seated himself beside her. "I couldn't help it, you know," he said quaintly. "It was you yourself who told me."

"Told you what?"

"That the world hadn't been quite kind."

Nan felt a sudden reckless instinct to tempt fate. There was already a breach in her privacy; for this one evening she did not care if the wall were wholly battered down.

"Tell me," she queried with averted head, "how—how much did you understand?"

Mallory scrutinised her reflectively.

"You really wish it?"

"Yes, really."

He was silent a moment. Then he spoke slowly, as though choosing his words.

"Fate has given you one of her back-handers, I think, and you want the thing you can't have—want it rather badly. And just now—nothing seems quite worth while."

"Go on," she said very low.

He hesitated. Then, as if suddenly making up his mind to hit hard, as a surgeon might decide to use the knife, he spoke incisively:

"The man wasn't worth it."

Nan gave a faint, irrepressible start. Recovering herself quickly, she contrived a short laugh.

"You don't know him—" she began.

"But I know you."

"This is only our second meeting."

"What of that? I know you well enough to be sure—quite sure—that you wouldn't give unasked. You're too proud, too analytical, and—at present—too little passionate."

Nan's face whitened. It was true; she had not given unasked, for although Maryon Rooke had never actually asked her to marry him, his whole attitude had been that of the demanding lover.

"You're rather an uncanny person," she said at last, slowly. "You understand—too much."

"Tout comprendre—c'est tout pardonner," quoted Mallory gently.

Nan fenced.

"And do I need pardon?" she asked.

"Yes," he answered simply, "You're not the woman God meant you to be. You're too critical, too cold—without passion."

"And I a musician?"—incredulously.

"Oh, it's in your music right enough. The artist in you has it. But the woman—so far, no. You're too introspective to surrender blindly. Artiste, analyst, critic first—only woman when those other three are satisfied."

Nan nodded.

"Yes," she said slowly. "I believe that's true."

"I think it is," he affirmed quietly. "And because men are what they are, and you are you, it's quite probable you'll fail to achieve the triumph of your womanhood." He paused, then added: "You're not one of those who would count the world well lost for love, you know—except on the impulse of an imaginative moment."

"No, I'm not," she answered reflectively. "I wonder why?"

"Why? Oh, you're a product of the times—the primeval instincts almost civilised out of you."

Nan sprang to her feet with a laugh.

"I won't stay here to be vivisected one moment longer!" she declared. "People like you ought to be blindfolded."

"Anything you like—so long as I'm forgiven."

"I think you'll have to be forgiven—in remembrance of the day when you took up a passenger in Hyde Park!"—smiling.

Soon afterwards people began to take their departure, Nan and Penelope alone making no move to go, since Kitty had offered to send them home in her car "at any old time." Mallory paused as he was making his farewells to the two girls.

"And am I permitted—may I have the privilege of calling?" he asked with one of his odd lapses into a quaintly elaborate manner that was wholly un-English.

"Yes, do. We shall be delighted."

"My thanks." And with a slight bow he left them.

Later on, when everyone else had gone, the Seymours, together with Penelope and Nan, drew round the fire for a final few minutes' yarn.

"Well, how do you like Kitty's latest lion?" asked Barry, lighting a cigarette.

"I think he's a dear," declared Penelope warmly. "I liked him immensely—what I saw of him."

"He's such an extraordinary faculty for reading people," chimed in Kitty, puffing luxuriously at a tiny gold-tipped cigarette.

"Part of a writer's stock in trade, of course," replied Barry. "But he's a clever chap."

"Too clever, I think," said Nan. "He fills one with a desire to have one's soul carefully fitted up with frosted glass windows."

Penelope laughed.

"What nonsense! I think he's a delightful person."

"Possibly. But, all the same, I think I'm frightened of people who make me feel as if I'd no clothes on."

"Nan!"

"It's quite true. Your most dazzling get-up wouldn't make an atom of difference to his opinion of the real 'you' underneath it all. Why, one might just as well have no pretensions to good looks when talking to a man like that! It's sheer waste of good material."

"Well, he's rather likely to want to get at the real 'you' of anybody he meets," interpolated Barry. "He was badly taken in once. His wife was one of the prettiest women I've ever struck—and she was an absolute devil."

"He's a widower, then!" exclaimed Penelope.

Barry shook his head regretfully.

"No such luck! That's the skeleton in poor old Peter's cupboard. Celia Mallory is very much alive and having as good a time as she can squeeze out of India."

"They live apart," explained Kitty. "She's one of those restless, excitable women, always craving to be right in the limelight, and she simply couldn't stand Peter's literary work. She was frantically jealous of it—wanted him to be dancing attendance on her all day long. And when his work interfered with the process, as of course it was bound to do, she made endless rows. She has money of her own, and finally informed Peter that she was going to India, where she has relatives. Her uncle's a judge, and she's several Army cousins married out there."

"Do you mean she has never come back?" gasped Penelope.

"No. And I don't think she intends to if she can help it. She's the most thoroughly selfish little beast of a woman I know, and cares for nothing on earth except enjoyment. She's spoiled Peter's life for him"—Kitty's voice shook a little—"and through it all he's been as patient as one of God's saints."

"Still, they're better apart," commented Barry. "While she was living with him she made a bigger hash of his life than she can do when she's away. She was spoiling his work as well as his life. And old Peter's work means a lot to him. He's still got that left out of the wreckage."

"Yes," agreed Kitty, "and of course he's writing better than ever now. Everyone says Lindley's Wife is a masterpiece."

Nan had been very silent during this revelation of Mallory's unfortunate domestic affairs. The discovery that he was already married came upon her as a shock. She felt stunned. Above all, she was conscious of a curious sense of loss, as though the Peter she had just began to know had suddenly receded a long way off from her and would never again be able to draw nearer.

When the Seymours' car at length bore the two girls back to Edenhall Mansions, Penelope found Nan an unwontedly silent companion. She responded to Penny's remarks in monosyllables and appeared to have nothing to say regarding the evening's happenings.

Mingled with the even throb of the engine, she could hear a constant iteration of the words:

"Married! Peter's married!"

And she was quite unconscious that in her mind he was already thinking of him as "Peter."



CHAPTER V

"PREUX CHEVALIER"

In due course Mallory paid his call upon the occupants of the flat, and entertained both girls immensely by the utter lack of self-consciousness with which he assisted in the preparations for tea—toasting scones and coaxing the kettle to boil as naturally as they themselves would have done.

He had none of the average Englishman's mauvaise honte—though be it thankfully acknowledged that, in the case of the younger generation, the experiences of the war have largely contributed towards rubbing it off. Mallory appeared serenely unconscious of any incongruity in the fact of a man whose clothes breathed Savile Row and whose linen was immaculate as only that of the Londoner—determinedly emergent from the grime of the city—ever is, pottering about in the tiny kitchen, and brooding over the blackly obstinate kettle.

This first visit was soon followed by others, and then by a foursome dinner at the Carlton, Ralph Fenton being invited to complete the party. Before long Peter was on a pleasant footing of intimacy with the two girls at the flat, though beyond this he did not seek to progress.

The explanation was simple enough. Primarily he was always aware of the cord which shackled him to a restless, butterfly woman who played at life out in India, and secondly, although he was undoubtedly attracted by Nan, he was not the type of man to fall headlong in love. He was too fastidious, too critical, altogether too much master of himself. Few women caused him a single quickened heart-beat. But it is to such men as this that when at last love grips them, binding them slowly and secretly with its clinging tendrils, it comes as an irresistible force to be reckoned with throughout the remainder of their lives.

So it came about that as the weeks grew into months, Mallory perceived—dimly and with a quaint resignation to the inevitable—that Nan and Love were coming to him hand in hand.

His first thought had been to seek safety in flight; then that gently humorous philosophy with which he habitually looked life in the face asserted itself, and with a shrug and a muttered "Kismet," he remained.

Nan appealed to him as no other woman had ever done. The ineffaceable quality of race about her pleased his fastidious taste; the French blood in her called to his; nor could he escape the heritage of charm bequeathed her by the fair and frail Angele de Varincourt. Above all, he understood her. Her temperament—idealistic and highly-strung, responsive as a violin to every shade of atmosphere—invoked his own, with its sensitiveness and keen, perceptive faculty.

But this very comprehension of her temperament blinded him to the possibility that there was any danger of her growing to care for him other than as a friend. He appreciated the fact that she had just received a buffeting from fate, that her confidence was shaken and her pride hurt to breaking-point, and the thought never entered his head that a woman so recently bruised by the hands of love—or more truly, love's simulacrum—could be tempted to risk her heart again so soon.

Feeling very safe, therefore, in the fact of his marriage, which was yet no marriage, and sure that there was no chance of his hurting Nan, he let himself love her, keeping his love tenderly in one of those secret empty rooms of the heart—empty rooms of which only the thrice-blessed in this world have no knowledge.

Outwardly, all that Peter permitted himself was to give her an unfailing friendship, to surround her with an atmosphere of homage and protection and adapt himself responsively to her varying moods. This he did untiringly, demanding nothing in return—and he alone knew the bitter effort it cost him.

Gradually Nan began to lean upon him, finding in the restfulness of such a friendship the healing of which she stood in need. She worked at her music with suddenly renewed enthusiasm, secure in the knowledge that Peter was always at hand to help and criticise with kindly, unerring judgment. She ceased to rail at fate and almost learned to bring a little philosophy—the happy philosophy of laughter—to bear upon the ills of life.

Consciously she thought of him only as Peter—Peter, her good pal—and so long as the pleasant, even course of their friendship remained uninterrupted she was never likely to realise that something bigger and more enduring than mere comradeship lay at the back of it all. She, too, like Mallory, reassured herself with the fact of his marriage—though the wife she had never seen and of whom Peter never spoke had inevitably receded in her mind into a somewhat vague and nebulous personality.

"Well?" demanded Kitty triumphantly one day. "And what is your opinion of Peter Mallory now?"

As she spoke, she caressed with light finger-tips a bowl of sun-gold narcissus—Mallory habitually kept the Edenhall flat supplied with flowers.

"We're frankly grateful to you for introducing him," replied Penelope. "He's been an absolute godsend all through this hateful long winter."

"What's so perfect about him," added Nan, "is that he never jars on one. He's never Philistine."

"In fact," interpolated Penelope somewhat ruefully, "he's so far from being Philistine that he has a dreadful faculty for making me feel deplorably commonplace."

Kitty gurgled.

"What rubbish! I'm sure nothing in the world would make Peter more unhappy than to think he affected anyone like that. He's the least assuming and most tender-hearted soul I know. You may be common-sense, Penny dear, but you're not in the least commonplace. They're two quite different things."

Nan lit a cigarette with deliberation.

"I'll tell you what is remarkable about Peter Mallory," she said. "He's sahib—right through. Very few men are."

Kitty, always tolerant and charitable, patted her arm deprecatingly.

"Oh, come, Nan, that's rather sweeping. There are heaps of nice men in the world."

"Heaps," assented Nan agreeably. "Heaps—bless 'em! But very few preux chevaliers. I only know two—one is my lamb of an uncle and the other is Peter."

"And where does my poor Barry come in?"

Nan smiled across at her indulgently.

"Barry? Pooh! He's just a delightful overgrown schoolboy—and you know it!"

* * * * * *

July in London, hot, dusty, and oppressive. Even the breezy altitude of the top-floor flat could not save its occupants from the intense heat which seemed to be wafted up from the baking streets below. The flat was "at home" to-day, the festive occasion indicated by the quantities of flowers which adorned it—big bowls of golden-hearted roses, tall vases of sweet peas—the creamy-yellow ones which merge into oyster pink, while the gorgeous royal scarlet of "King Edward" glowed in dusky corners.

Penelope trailed somewhat lethargically hither and thither, adding last touches to the small green tables, arranged in readiness for bridge, and sighing at the oppressive heat of the afternoon. First she opened the windows to let in the air, then closed them to shut out the heat, only to fling them open once again, exclaiming impatiently:

"Phew! I really don't know which is the cooler!"

"Neither!" responded a gay voice from the doorway. "The bottomless pit would probably be refreshingly draughty in comparison with town just now."

Penelope whirled round to find Kitty, immaculate in white from head to foot and looking perfectly cool and composed, standing on the threshold.

"How do you manage it?" she said admiringly. "Even in this sweltering heat, when the rest of us look as though we had run in the wash, you give the impression that you've just stepped out of a refrigerated bandbox."

"Appearances are as deceitful as usual, then," replied Kitty, sinking down into an arm-chair and unfurling a small fan. "I'm simply melted! Am I the first arrival?" she continued. "Where's Nan?"

"She and Peter are decorating the tea-table—smiles and things, you know"—Penelope waved an explanatory hand.

Kitty nodded.

"I think my plan was a good one, don't you? Peter's been an excellent antidote to Maryon Rooke," she observed complacently.

"I'm not so sure," returned Penelope with characteristic caution. "I think a married man—especially such an unmarried married man as Pete—is rather a dangerous antidote."

"Nonsense! They both know he's married! And they've both got normal common-sense."

"But," objected Penelope, suddenly and unexpectedly, "love has nothing whatever to do with common-sense."

Kitty gazed at her in frank amazement.

"Penelope! What's come to you? We've always regarded you as the severely practical member of the community, and here you are talking rank heresy!"

Penelope laughed a little, and a faint flush stole up into her cheeks.

"I'm not unobservant, remember," she returned, lightly, her eyes avoiding Kitty's. "And my observations have led me to the conclusion that love and common-sense are distinctly antipathic."

"Well, Nan seems quite happy and cheerful again, anyway," retorted Kitty. "And if she'd fallen in love with Peter, knowing that there was a very much alive Mrs. Peter in the background, she would hardly be feeling particularly cheery."

"Oh, I don't think Nan's fallen in love—yet. And as to her present joyful mood, that's easily accounted for by the doubled income Lord St. John is allowing her—I never knew anyone extract quite so much satisfaction as Nan from the actual spending of money. Besides, although she doesn't realise it, Peter has made himself rather indispensable to her."

Kitty spoke with nervous sharpness:

"But you don't think she cares for him?"

The other reflected a moment before replying. Finally she said:

"If she does, it is quite unconsciously. Consciously, I feel almost sure that Maryon Rooke still occupies her thoughts."

"I wonder where she finds the great attraction in him?" queried Kitty thoughtfully.

"Simply this: That he was the first and, go far, the only man who has ever appealed to her at all. And as he has treated her rather badly, he's succeeded in fixing himself in her mind."

"Well, I've never understood the affair at all. Rooke was in love if ever a man was."

"Yes," agreed Penelope slowly. "But I think Maryon Rooke is what I should describe as—a born bachelor."

"Then he's no business philandering round with women who aren't born spinsters," retorted Kitty promptly.

Penelope's brown eyes twinkled.

"You're rather limiting his horizon," she observed.

Kitty laughed.

"Possibly. But I'm furious with him for hashing up Nan's life. . . . As he has done," she added.

"Not necessarily," suggested Penelope. "I think Nan's rather like a little hard, unopened bud. He's bruised the bud, perhaps, but I don't think he's injured the flower."

"Good gracious, Penny, you're not trying to find excuses for the man!"

"Not a bit of it. But I believe that Nan has such a tremendous fascination for him that he simply can't resist her. In fact, I think if the question of finance didn't enter into the matter he'd be ready to shoulder the matrimonial yoke. . . But I don't see Maryon Rooke settling down to matrimony on a limited income! And of course Nan's own income ceases if she marries."

"It was very queer of Lord St. John to make that stipulation," commented Kitty.

"I don't think so at all. He wants to make quite sure that the man who marries Nan does so for love—and nothing else. And also to give her a free hand. How many women, if they had money of their own, as Nan has, would marry, do you suppose?" Penelope spoke heatedly. She was a modern of the moderns in her ideas. "Subconsciously it's the feeling of economical dependence, the dread of ultimate poverty, which has driven half the untrained women one knows into unhappy marriages. And Lord St. John recognises it. He's progressed with the times, bless him!"

"But Rooke will be making big money before very long," protested Kitty, keeping firmly to the point and declining to be led aside into one of Penelope's argumentative byeways. "He'll be able to settle a decent income on his wife in a few years."

"Very possibly. He'll be one of the most fashionable portrait painters of the day. But until that day comes, Maryon isn't going to tie himself up with a woman whose income ceases when she marries. Besides"—drily—"an unattached bachelor is considerably more in demand as a painter of society women's portraits than a Benedict."

"So Nan is to be sacrificed?" threw out Kitty.

"It seems like it. And as long as Maryon Rooke occupies the foreground in her mind, no other man will occur to her as anything but a friend."

"Then I wish somebody—or something—would sweep him out of her mind!"

"Well, he's away now, at any rate," said Penelope soothingly. "So let's be thankful for small mercies."

As she spoke, the maid—an improvement on their original "Adagio"—entered with a telegram on a salver which she offered to Penelope. The latter slit open the envelope without glancing at the address and uttered a sharp exclamation of dismay as she read the brief communication it contained.

Kitty leaned forward.

"What is it, Penny? Not bad news?"

"It's for Nan," returned Penelope shortly. "You can read it."

Kitty perused it in silence.

"Am in town. Shall call this afternoon on chance of finding you in.—ROOKE."

"The very last person we wanted to blow in here just now," commented Kitty as she returned the wire.

Penelope slipped it back into its envelope and replaced it on the salver.

"Take it to Miss Davenant," she told the maid quietly. "And explain that you brought it to me by mistake."



CHAPTER VI

A FORGOTTEN FAN

Meanwhile, in the next room, Peter and Nan, having completed their scheme of decoration with "smilax and things," were resting from their labours and smoking sociably together.

Nan cast a reflective eye upon the table.

"You don't think it looks too much like a shrubbery where you have to hunt for the cakes, do you?" she suggested.

"Certainly I don't," replied Peter promptly. "If there is some slight confusion occasioned by that trail of smilax round the pink sugar-icing cake it merely adds to its attractiveness. The charm of mystery, you know!"

"I believe if Maryon were here he would sweep it all on to the floor in disgust!" observed Nan suddenly. "He'd say we'd forfeited simplicity."

"Maryon Rooke, the artist, you mean?"

The warm colour rushed into Nan's face, and she glanced at Peter with startled—almost frightened—eyes. She could not conceive why the sudden recollection of Rooke should have sprung into her mind at this particular moment. With difficulty her lips framed the monosyllable "Yes."

Peter bent forward. They were sitting together on the wide window-seat, the sound of the traffic from below coming murmuringly to their ears like some muted diapason.

"Nan"—Peter spoke very quietly—"Nan—was he the man?"

She nodded voicelessly. Peter made a quick gesture as though to lay his hand over hers, then checked it abruptly.

"My dear," he said, "do you still care?"

"No, I don't think so," she answered uncertainly. "I—I'm not sure. Oh, Peter, how difficult life is!"

He assented briefly. He knew very well how difficult.

"I can't imagine why I thought of Maryon just now," went on Nan, a puzzled frown wrinkling her brows. "I never do, as a rule, when I'm with you."

She smiled rather wistfully and with a restless movement he sprang to his feet and began pacing the room. A little cry of dismay broke from her and she came quickly to his side, lifting a questioning face to his.

"Why, Peter—Peter—What have I said? You're not angry, are you?"

"Angry!" His voice roughened a bit. "If I could only tell you the truth!"

"Tell it me," she said simply.

For a moment he was silent. Then:

"Don't ask me, Nan. There are some things that can't be told."

As he spoke, his eyes, dark and passionate with some forcibly restrained emotion, met hers, and in an instant it seemed as though the thing he must not speak were spoken.

Nan flushed scarlet from brow to throat, her eyes widened, and the breath fluttered unevenly between her parted lips. She knew—she knew what Mallory had left unsaid.

"Peter——"

She held out her hands to him with a sudden childish gesture of surrender, and involuntarily he gathered them into his own. At the same moment the door opened to admit the maid and he drew back quickly, while Nan's outstretched hands fell limply to her side.

"This wire's just come for you, miss," said the maid, and from her manner it was quite impossible to guess whether she had observed anything unusual or not. "I took it to Miss Craig by mistake."

Mechanically Nan extracted the thin sheet from its torn envelope. As her eyes absorbed the few lines of writing, her face whitened and she drew her breath in sharply.

The next instant, however, she recovered her poise, and crumpling the telegram into a ball she addressed the maid composedly.

"There's no answer," she said. Adding: "Has anyone arrived yet?"

"Mrs. Seymour is here, miss. And"—listening—"I think Lord St. John must have arrived."

Nan turned to Mallory.

"Then we'd better go, Peter. Come along."

Mallory, as he followed her into the sitting-room, realised that she had all at once retreated a thousand miles away from him. He wondered what the contents of the telegram could have been. The oblong red envelope seemed to have descended suddenly between them like a shutter.

Lord St. John, having only just arrived, was still standing as they entered the room, and Nan rushed into apologies as she shook hands with him and kissed Mrs. Seymour.

"Heaps of apologies for not being here when you arrived. I really haven't any excuse to offer except"—with a small gamin smile—"that I was otherwise occupied!"

"If the occupation was a matter of toilette, we'll excuse you," observed St. John, surveying her with the usual masculine approbation of a white frock defined with touches of black. "The time wasn't wasted."

Nan slipped her arm affectionately into his.

"Oh, why aren't you forty years younger and someone else's uncle? You'd be such a charming young man!" she exclaimed.

St. John smiled.

"I was, my dear—forty years ago." And he sighed.

During the next half hour the remainder of the guests came dropping in by twos and threes, and after a little desultory conversation everyone settled down to the serious business of bridge. Now and then those who were not playing ventured a subdued murmur of talk amongst themselves, but for the most part the silence of the room was only broken by voices declaring trumps in a rapidly ascending scale of values, and then, after a hectic interval, by the same voices calling out the score in varying degrees of satisfaction or otherwise.

Nan, as a rule, played a good game, but to-day her play was nervous and erratic, and Mallory, her partner of the moment, instinctively connected this with the agitation she had shown on receiving the wire. Ignorant of its contents, he awaited developments.

He had not very long to wait. Shortly afterwards the trill of the door-bell pealed through the flat, followed by a sound of footsteps in the hall, and, a minute later, Maryon Rooke came into the room. A brief stir succeeded his entrance, as Penelope and one or two other non-players exchanged greetings with him. Then he crossed over to where Nan was playing. She was acutely conscious of his tall, loose-limbed figure as he threaded his way carefully between the tables.

"Gambling as usual?" he queried, when he had shaken hands. "And winning—also as usual—I suppose?"

"On the contrary," she retorted. "I've just thrown away a perfectly good trick. Your arrival distracted my attention."

Oddly enough, she had complete control of her voice, although her play and the slight trembling of her fingers as she held her cards fan-wise were sufficient indication to Mallory of the deep waters that had been stirred beneath the surface.

"I'm sorry my return has proved so—inopportune," returned Rooke. As he spoke his eyes rested for a reflective moment upon Peter Mallory, then returned challengingly to Nan's face. The betraying colour flew up under her skin. She understood what he intended to convey as well as though he had clothed his thought in words.

"Having none, partner?"

Mallory's kindly, drawling voice recalled her to the game, and she made an effort to focus her attention on the cards. But it was quite useless. Her play grew wilder and more erratic with each hand that was dealt, until at last a good no-trump call, completely thrown away by her disastrous tactics, brought the rubber to an end.

"You're not in your usual form this afternoon, Nan," remarked one of her opponents as they all rose from the table. Other tables, too, were breaking up and some of the guests preparing to leave.

"No. I've played abominably," she acquiesced. "I'm sorry, partner"—turning to Peter. "It must be the weather. This heat's intolerable."

He put her apology aside with a quick gesture.

"There's thunder in the air, I think. You shouldn't have troubled to play if you didn't feel inclined."

Nan threw him a glance of gratitude—Peter never seemed to fail her either in big or little things. Then, having settled accounts with her opponents, she moved away to join the chattering knot of departing guests congregated round the doorway.

Mallory's eyes followed her thoughtfully. He had already surmised that Maryon Rooke was the sender of the telegram, and he could see how unmistakably his sudden reappearance had shaken her. He felt baffled. Did the man still hold her? Was all the striving of the last few months to prove useless? Those long hours of self-effacement when he had tried by every means in his power to restore Nan to a normal interest in life, to be the good comrade she needed at no matter what cost to himself, demanding nothing in return! For it had been a hard struggle to be constantly with the woman he loved and yet keep himself in hand. To Mallory, Rooke's return seemed grotesquely inopportune.

He was roused from his thoughts to the realisation that people were leaving. Everyone appeared to be talking at once and the air was full of the murmur of wins and losses and of sharp-edged criticism of "my partner's play." Maryon Rooke alone showed no signs of moving, but remained standing a little apart near the window, an unlit cigarette in his hand.

"Penelope, do come back to Green Street with me." Kitty's voice was beseeching. "My little milliner was to have had a couple of hats ready for me this afternoon, which means she will arrive with a perfect avalanche of boxes, each containing a dinkier hat than the last, and I shall fall a helpless victim."

Her husband grinned unkindly.

"Yes, do come along, Penny," he urged. "Then you can lay a restraining hand on Kitty when she's bought the first half dozen."

"There'll just be time before dinner, and the car shall bring you back again," entreated Kitty, and Penelope, knowing that the former would be but clay in the practised hands of her "little milliner," smiled acquiescence.

"Barry"—Kitty tapped her husband's arm—"go down and see if the car is there. Peter, can I drop you anywhere?"

In a couple of minutes the room was cleared, and Kitty, shepherding her flock before her, departed in a gale of good-byes, leaving Nan and Maryon Rooke together.

Each was silent. The girl's small head was thrown back, and in the poise of her slim young body there was a mingling of challenge and appealing self-defence. She looked like some trapped wild thing at bay.

Slowly Rooke crossed the room and came towards her, and as she met those odd, magnetic eyes of his—passionately expressive as only hazel eyes can be—she felt the old fascination stealing over her once more. Her heart sank. She had dreaded this, fought against it, and in her inmost soul believed that she had conquered it. Yet now his mere presence sent the blood racing through, her veins with a hurrying, leaping speed that frightened her.

"Nan!" As he spoke he bent and took her two hands gently into his. Then, as though the touch of her slight fingers roused some slumbering fire within him, his grasp tightened suddenly. He drew her nearer, his eyes holding hers, and her slim body swayed towards him, yielding to the eager clasp of his arms.

"Kiss me, Nan!" he said, the roughness of passion in his voice. "You never kissed me—never in all those beautiful months we were together. And now—now when there's only parting ahead of us—"

His eyes burned down on to her tilted face. She could hear his hurried breathing. His lips were almost touching hers.

. . . Then the door opened quickly and Peter Mallory stood upon the threshold.

Swiftly though they started apart, it was impossible that he should not have seen Rooke holding Nan close in his arms, his head bent above hers. Their attitude was unmistakable—it could have but one significance.

Mallory paused abruptly in the doorway. Then, in a voice entirely devoid of expression, he said quietly:

"Mrs. Seymour left her fan behind—I came back to fetch it." With a slight bow he picked up the forgotten fan and turned to go. "Good-bye once more."

The door closed behind him, and Nan stood very still, her arms hanging down at her sides. But Maryon could read the stricken expression in her eyes—the desperate appeal of them. They betrayed her.

"What's that man to you?" he demanded.

"Nothing."

He caught her roughly by the shoulders.

"I don't believe it!" he exclaimed hotly. "He's the man you love. The very expression of your face gave it away."

"I've told you," she answered unemotionally. "Peter Mallory is nothing to me, never can be anything, except"—her voice quivered a little despite herself—"just a friend."

Maryon's eyes searched her face.

"Then kiss me!" He repeated his earlier demand, imperiously.

She drew back.

"Why should I kiss you?"

The quietly uttered question seemed to set him very far apart from her. In an instant he knew how much he had forfeited by his absence.

"Nan," he said, in his voice a curious charm of appeal, "do you know it's nearly a year since I saw you? And now—now I've only half an hour!"

"Only half an hour?" she repeated vaguely.

"Yes, I go back to Devonshire to-night. But I craved a glimpse of the 'Beloved' before I went."

The words brought Nan sharply back to herself. He was still the same incomprehensible, unsatisfactory lover as of old, and with the realisation a cold fury of scorn and resentment swept over her, blotting out what she had always counted as her love for him. It was as though a string, too tightly stretched, had suddenly snapped.

She answered him indifferently.

"To cheer you on your way, I suppose?"

"No. I shouldn't"—significantly—"call it cheering. I've been back in England a month, alone in the damned desolation of Dartmoor, fighting—fighting to keep away from you."

She looked at him with steady, scrutinising eyes.

"Why need you have kept away?" she asked incisively.

"At the bidding of the great god Circumstance. Oh, my dear, my dear"—speaking with passionate vehemence—"don't you know . . . don't you understand that if only I weren't a poor devil of a painter with my way to make in a world that can only be bought with gold—nothing should part us ever again? . . . But as it is—"

Nan listened to the outburst with down-bent head. She understood now—oh, yes, she understood perfectly. He loved her well enough in his own way—but Maryon's way meant that the love and happiness of the woman who married him would always be a matter of secondary importance. The bitterness of her resentment deepened within her, flooding her whole being.

"'If only!'" repeated Rooke. "It's the old story, Nan—the desire of the moth for the flame."

"The moth is a very blundering creature," said Nan quietly. "He makes mistakes sometimes—perhaps imagining a flame where there is none."

"No!" exclaimed Rooke violently. "I made no mistake! You loved me as much as I loved you. I know it! By God, do you think a man can't tell when the woman he loves, loves him?"

"Well, you must accept the only alternative then," she answered coolly. "Sometimes a flame flickers out—and dies."

It was as though she had cut him across the face with a whip. In a sudden madness he caught her in his arms, crushing her slender body against his, and kissed her savagely.

"There!" he cried, a note of fierce triumph ringing in his voice. "Whether your love is dead or no, I'll not go out of your life with nothing to call my own, and I've made your lips—mine."

Loosening his hold of her he stumbled from the room.

Nan remained just where he had left her. She stood quite motionless for several minutes, almost as though she were waiting for something. Then with a leap of her breath, half-sigh, half-exultation, the knowledge of what had happened to her crystallised into clear significance.

In one swift, overwhelming moment of illumination she realised that the frail blossom of love which had been tentatively budding in the garden of her heart was dead—withered, starved out of existence ere it had quite believed in its own reality.

Maryon Rooke no longer meant anything to her. She felt completely indifferent as to whether she ever saw him again or not. She was free! While he had been with her she had felt unsure, uncertain of herself. The interview had shaken her. Yet actually, after those first dazzled moments, the emotion she felt partook more of the dim, sad ache that the memory-haunted scent of a flower may bring than of any more vital sentiment. But now that he had gone, it came upon her with a shock of joyful surprise that she was free—beautifully, gloriously free!

The ecstasy only lasted for a moment. Then with a sudden childish movement she put her hand resentfully to her face where the roughness of his beard had grazed it. She wished he had not kissed her—it would be a disagreeable memory.

"I shall never forget now," she muttered. "I shall never be able to forget."

There was an odd note of fear in her voice.



CHAPTER VII

THE OTHER SIDE OF THE DOOR

Having secured Kitty's forgotten fan, Mallory absent-mindedly descended the long stone flight of steps instead of taking the lift and, regaining the street, hailed a passing taxi and drove towards Green Street, whither the Seymours' car had already proceeded.

As the driver threaded his way through the traffic, Peter's thoughts revolved round the scene which his unexpected return to the flat had interrupted. There was only one deduction to be drawn from it, which was that Nan, after all, still cared for Maryon Rooke. The old love still held her.

The realisation was bitter. Even though the woman who was his wife must always stand betwixt himself and Nan, yet loving her as he did, it had meant a good deal to Mallory to know that no other man had any claim upon her.

And earlier in the afternoon, just before the maid had intruded on them to deliver Rooke's telegram, it had seemed almost as though Nan, too, had cared. One moment more alone together and he would have known—been sure.

A vague vision of the future had even flashed through his mind—he and Nan never any more to one another than good comrades, but each knowing that underneath their friendship lay something stronger and deeper—the knowledge that, though unavowed, they belonged to each other. And even a love that can never be satisfied is better than life without love. It may bring its moments of unbearable agony, but it is still love—the most beautiful and glorious thing in the world. And the pain of knowing that a great gulf is for ever set between two who love is a penalty that real love can face and triumph over.

But now the whole situation was altered. Unmistakably Maryon Rooke still meant a good deal to Nan, although Peter felt a certain consciousness that if he were to pit himself against Rooke he could probably make the latter's position very insecure. But was it fair? Was it fair to take advantage of the quick responsiveness of Nan's emotions—that sensitiveness which gave reply as readily as a violin to the bow?

She was not a woman to find happiness very easily, and he himself had nothing to offer her except a love that must always be forbidden, unconsummated. In God's Name, then, if Maryon Rooke could give her happiness, what right had he to stand in the way?

By the time the taxi had brought him to the door of Kitty's house, his decision was taken. He would clear out—see as little of Nan as possible. It was the best thing he could do for her, and the consideration of what it would cost him he relegated to a later period.

His steps lagged somewhat as he followed the manservant upstairs to Kitty's own particular den, and the slight limp which the war had left him seemed rather more marked than usual. Any great physical or nervous strain, invariably produced this effect. But he mustered up a smile as he entered the room and held out the recovered fan.

The "little milliner" was nowhere to be seen, and Kitty herself was ensconced on the Chesterfield, enjoying an iced lemon-squash and a cigarette, while Penelope and Barry were downstairs playing a desultory game of billiards. The irregular click of the ivory balls came faintly to Mallory's ears.

"Got my fan, Peter? Heaps of thanks. What will you have? A whisky-and-soda? . . . Why—Peter—"

She broke on abruptly as she caught sight of his face. He was rather pale and his eyes had a tired, beaten look in them.

"What's wrong, Peter?"

He smiled down at her as she lay tucked up amongst her cushions.

"Why should there be anything wrong?"

"Something is," replied Kitty decidedly. "Did I swish you away from the flat against your will?"

"I should be a very ungrateful person if I failed to appreciate my present privileges."

She shook her head disgustedly.

"You're a very annoying person!" she returned. "You invariably take refuge in a compliment."

"Dear Madame Kitty"—Mallory leaned forward and looked down at her with his steady grey-blue eyes—"dear Madame Kitty, I say to you what I mean. I do not compliment my friends"—his voice deepened—"my dear, trusted friends."

His foreign twist of phrase was unusually pronounced, as always in moments of strong feeling.

"But that's just it!" she declared emphatically. "You're not trusting me—you're keeping me outside the door."

"Believe me, there's nothing you'd wish to see—the other side."

"Which means that in any case it's no use knocking at a door that won't be opened," said Kitty, apparently yielding the point. "So we'll switch off that subject and get on to the next. We go down to Mallow Court at the end of this week. I can't stand town in July. What date are you coming to us?"

Peter was silent a moment, his eyes bent on the ground. Then he raised his head suddenly as though he had just come to a decision.

"I'm afraid I shan't be able to come down," he said quietly.

"But you promised us!" objected Kitty. "Peter, you can't go back on a promise!"

He regarded her gravely. Then:

"Sometimes one has to do—even that."

Kitty, discerning in his refusal another facet of that "something wrong" she had suspected, clasped her hands round her knees and faced him with deliberation.

"Look here, Peter, it isn't you to break a promise without some real good reason. You say you can't come down to us at Mallow. Why not?"

He met her eyes steadily.

"I can't answer that," he replied.

Kitty remained obdurate.

"I want an answer, Peter. We've been pals for some time now, and"—with vigour—"I'm not going to be kept out of whatever it is that's hurting you. So tell me."

He made no answer, and she slipped down from the Chesterfield and came to his side.

"Is it anything to do with Nan?" she asked gently, her thoughts going back to the talk she had had with Penelope before the bridge party began.

A rather weary smile curved his lips.

"It doesn't seem much use trying to keep you in the dark, does it?"

"I must know," she urged. Adding with feminine guile:

"Of course I should be frightfully hurt if I thought you weren't coming just because you didn't want to. But still I'd rather know—even if that were the reason."

"Not want to?" he broke out, his control suddenly snapping. "I'd give my soul to come!"

The bitterness in his voice—in the lazy, drawling tones she knew so well—let in a flood of light upon the darkness in which she had been groping.

"Peter—oh, Peter!" she cried tremulously. "You're not—you don't mean that you care for Nan—seriously?"

"I don't think many men could be with her much without caring," he answered simply.

"Oh, I'm sorry—I'm sorry! . . . I—I never thought of that when I asked you to be a pal to her." Her voice shook uncontrollably.

He smiled again—the game half-weary, half-tenderly amused smile which was so characteristic.

"You needn't be sorry," he said, speaking with great gentleness. "I shall never be sorry that I love her. It's only that just now she doesn't need me. That's why I won't come down to Mallow."

"Not need you!"

"No. The man she needs has come back. I can't tell you how I know—you'll have to trust me over that—but I do know that Maryon Rooke has come back to her and that he is the man who means everything to her."

Kitty's brows drew together as she pondered the question whether Peter were right or wrong in his opinion.

"I don't think you're right," she said at last in tones of conviction. "I don't believe she 'needs' him at all. I dare-say he still fascinates her. He has"—she hesitated—"a curious sort of fascination for some women. And the sooner Nan is cured of it the better."

"I've done—all that I could," he answered briefly.

"Don't I know that?" Kitty slipped her arm into his. "You've been splendid! That's just why I want you to come down to us in Cornwall."

"But if Rooke is there—"

"Maryon?" She paused, then went on with a chilly little note of haughtiness in her voice. "I certainly don't propose to invite Maryon Rooke to Mallow."

"Still, you can't prevent him from taking a summer holiday at St. Wennys."

St. Wennys was a small fishing village on the Cornish coast, barely a mile away from Mallow Court.

"He won't come—I'm sure!" asserted Kitty. "Sir Robert Burnham lives quite near there—he's Maryon's godfather—and they hate each other like poison."

"Why?"

"Oh, old Sir Robert was Maryon's guardian till he came of age, and then, when Maryon decided to go in for painting, he presented him with the small patrimony to which he was entitled and declined to have anything further to do with him—either financially or otherwise. Simply chucked him. Maryon went through some very bad times, I believe, in his early days," continued Kitty, striving to be just. "That's the one thing I respect him for. He stuck to it and won through to where he stands now."

"It shows he's got some grit, anyway," agreed Peter. "And do you think"—smiling—"that that's the type of man who's going to give in over winning the woman he wants? . . . Should I, if things were different—if I were free?"

Kitty laughed reluctantly.

"You? No. But you're not Maryon Rooke. He could never be the kind of lover you would be, my Peter. With him, his art counts first of anything in the wide world. And that's why I don't think he'll come to St. Wennys. He's in love with Nan—as far as his type can be in love—but he's not going to tie himself up with her. So he'll keep away."

She paused, then went on urgently:

"Peter dear, we shall all of us hate it so if you don't come down to Cornwall with us this year. Look, if Rooke doesn't show up down there, so that we know he's only philandering with Nan and has no real intention of marrying her, will you come then?"

He still hesitated. And all at once Kitty saw the other side of the picture—Peter's side. She wanted him at Mallow—they all wanted him. But she had not thought of the matter from his point of view. Now that she knew he cared for Nan she recognised that it would be a bitterly hard thing for him to be under the same roof with the woman he loved, yet from whom he was barred by every law of God and man, and who, as far as Kitty knew, regarded him solely in the light of a friend. Even if Nan were growing to care for Peter—the bare possibility flashed through Kitty's mind only to be instantly dismissed—even so, it would serve only to complicate matters still further.

When she spoke again it was in a very subdued tone of voice and with an accent of keen self-reproach.

"Peter, I'm a selfish pig! All this time I've never been thinking of you—only of ourselves. I believe it's your own fault"—with a rather quavering laugh. "You've taught us all to expect so much from you—and to give so little."

Mallory made a quick gesture of dissent.

"Oh, yes, you have," she insisted. "You're always giving and we just—take! I never thought how hard a thing I was asking when I begged you to come down to Mallow while Nan was with us. It was sheer brutality to suggest it." Her voice trembled. "Please forgive me, Peter!"

"My dear, there's nothing to forgive. You know I love Nan, that she'll always be the one woman for me. But you know, too, that there's Celia, and that Nan and I can never be more to each other than we are now—just friends. I'm not going to forfeit that friendship—unless it happens it would be best for Nan that we should forget we were even friends. And I won't say it doesn't hurt to be with her. But there are some hurts that one would rather bear than lose what goes with them."

The grave voice, with the undertone of pain running through it, ceased. Kitty's tears were flowing unchecked.

"Oh, Peter, Peter!" she cried sobbingly. "Why aren't you free? You and Nan are just made for each other."

He winced a little, as though she had laid her finger on a raw spot.

"Hush, Kitten," he said quietly. "Don't cry so! These things happen and we've got to face them."

Kitty subsided into a chair and mopped her eyes.

"It's wicked—wicked that you should be tied up to a woman like Celia—a woman who's got no more soul than this chair!"—banging the chair-arm viciously.

"And you mustn't say things like that, either," chided Peter, smiling at her very kindly.

As he spoke there came the sound of footsteps, and the voices of Barry and Penelope could be heard as they approached Kitty's den, by way of the corridor.

"I owe you a bob, then," Barry was saying in his easy, good-natured tones. "You beat me fair and square that last game, Penny."

Kitty sprang up, suddenly conscious of her tear-stained face.

"Oh, I can't see them—-not now! Peter, stop them from coming here!"

A moment later Mallory came out of the room and met the approaching couple before they had reached the door.

"I was just coming to say good-bye to Kitty," began Penelope. "I'd no idea the time had flown so quickly."

"Charm of my society," murmured Barry.

Peter's face was rather white and set, but he managed to reply in a voice that sounded fairly normal.

"Kitty's very fagged and she's going to rest for a few minutes before dressing for dinner. She asked me to say good-bye to you for her, Penelope."

"Then it falls to my lot to speed the parting guest," said Barry cheerily. "Peter, old son, can the car take you on anywhere after dropping Penny at the Mansions?"

Peter was conscious of a sudden panic. He had just come from baring the rawness of his wound to Kitty, and, gently as her fingers had probed, even the kind hands of a friend may sometimes hurt excruciatingly. He felt that at the moment he could not endure the companionship of any living soul.

"No, thanks," he answered jerkily. "I'll walk."



CHAPTER VIII

THE MIDDLE OF THE STAIRCASE

Mallow Court, the Seymours' country home, lay not a mile from the village of St. Wennys. A low, two-storied house of creeper-clad stone, it stood perched upon the cliffs, overlooking the wild sea which beats up against the Cornish coast.

The house itself had been built in a quaint, three-sided fashion, the central portion and the two wings which flanked it rectangularly serving to enclose a sunk lawn round which ran a wide, flagged path. A low, grey stone wall, facing the sea, fenced the fourth side of the square, at one end of which a gate gave egress on to the sea-bitten grassy slope that led to the edge of the cliff itself.

A grove of trees half-girdled the house, and this, together with the sheltering upward trend of the downs on one side of it, tempered the violence of the fierce winds which sometimes swept the coast-line even in summer.

Behind the house, under the lee of the rising upland, lay the gardens of Mallow, witness to the loving care of generations. Stretches of lawn, coolly green and shaven, sloped away from a terrace which ran the whole length of the house, meeting the gravelled drive as it curved past the house-door. Beyond lay dim sweet alleys, over-arched by trees, and below, where a sudden dip in the configuration of the land admitted of it, were grassy terraces, gay with beds of flowers, linked together by short flights of grass-grown steps.

"I can't understand why you spend so much time in stuffy old London, Kitty, when you have this heavenly place to come to."

Nan spoke from a nest of half-a-dozen cushions heaped together beneath the shade of a tree. Here she was lounging luxuriously, smoking innumerable Turkish cigarettes, while Kitty swung tranquilly in a hammock close by. Penelope had been invisible since lunch time. They had all been down at Mallow the better part of a month, and she and Ralph Fenton quite frequently absented themselves, "hovering," as Barry explained, "on the verge of an engagement."

"My dear, the longer I stay in town, the more thoroughly I enjoy the country when we come here. I get the quintessence of enjoyment by treating Mallow as a liqueur."

Nan laughed. There was a faint flavour of bitterness in her laughter.

"Practically most of our good times in this world are only to be obtained in the liqueur form. The gods don't make a habit of offering you a big jug of enjoyment."

"If they did, you'd be certain to refuse it because you didn't like the shape of the jug!" retorted Kitty.

Nan smiled whole-heartedly.

"What a miserable, carping, discontented creature I must be!"

"I'll swear that's not true!" An emphatic masculine voice intervened, and round the corner of the clump of trees beneath which the two girls had taken refuge, swung a man's tall, well-setup figure clad in knickerbockers and a Norfolk coat.

"Good gracious, Roger, how you made me jump!" And Kitty hurriedly lowered a pair of smartly-shod feet which had been occupying a somewhat elevated position in the hammock.

"I'm sorry. How d'you do, Kit? And how are you, Miss Davenant?" answered the new-comer.

The alteration in his voice as he addressed Nan was quite perceptible to anyone well-versed in the symptoms of the state of being in love, and his piercing light-grey eyes beneath their shaggy, sunburnt brows—fierce, far-visioned eyes that reminded one of the eyes of a hawk—softened amazingly as they rested upon her charming face.

"Oh, we're quite all right, thanks," she answered. "That is, when people don't drop suddenly from the clouds and galvanise us into action this warm weather."

She regarded him with a faintly quizzical smile. He was not particularly attractive in appearance, though tall and well-built. About forty-two, a typical English sportsman of the out-door, cold-tub-in-the-morning genus, he had a square-jawed, rather ugly face, roofed with a crop of brown hair a trifle sunburnt at its tips as a consequence of long days spent in the open. His mouth indicated a certain amount of self-will, the inborn imperiousness of a man who has met with obedient services as a matter of course, and whose forebears, from one generation to another, have always been masters of men. And, it might be added, masters of their women-kind as well, in the good, old-fashioned way. There was, too, more than a hint of obstinacy and temper in the long, rather projecting chin and dominant nose.

But the smile he bestowed on Nan when he answered her redeemed the ugliness of his face considerably. It was the smile of a man who could be both kindly and generous where his prejudices were not involved, who might even be capable of something rather big if occasion warranted it.

"It was too bad of me to startle you like that," he acknowledged. "Please forgive me. I caught sight of you both through the trees and declared myself rather too suddenly."

"Always a mistake," commented Nan, nodding wisely.

Roger Trenby regarded her doubtfully. She was extraordinarily attractive, this slim young woman from London who was staying at Mallow, but she not infrequently gave utterances to remarks which, although apparently straight-forward enough, yet filled him with a vague, uneasy feeling that they held some undercurrent of significance which had eluded him.

He skirted the quicksand hastily, and turned the conversation to a subject where be felt himself on sure ground.

"I've been exercising hounds to-day."

Trenby was Master of the Trevithick Foxhounds, and had the reputation of being one of the finest huntsmen in the county, and his heart and his pluck and a great deal of his money went to the preserving of it.

"Oh," cried Nan warmly, "why didn't you bring them round by Mallow before you went back to the kennels?"

"We didn't come coastward at all," he replied. "I never thought of your caring to see them."

Nan was not in the least a sportswoman by nature, though she had hunted as a child—albeit much against her will—to satisfy the whim of a father who had been a dare-devil rider across country and had found his joy in life—and finally his death—in the hunting field he had loved. But she was a lover of animals, like most people of artistic temperament, and her reply was enthusiastic.

"Of course I'd like to have seen them!"

Roger's face brightened.

"Then will you let me show you the kennels one day? I could motor over for you and bring you back afterwards."

Nan nodded up at him.

"I'd like to come very much. When shall we do it?"

Kitty stirred idly in her hammock.

"You've let yourself in for it now, Roger," she remarked. "Nan is the most impatient person alive."

Once more Nan looked up, with lazy "blue violet" eyes whose seductive sweetness sent an unaccustomed thrill down Roger's spine. She was so different, this slender bit of womanhood with her dusky hair and petal skin, from the sturdy, thick-booted, sporting type of girl to which he was accustomed. For Roger Trenby very rarely left his ancestral acres to essay the possibilities of the great outer world, and his knowledge of women had been hitherto chiefly gleaned from the comely—if somewhat stolid—damsels of the countryside, with whom he had shot and fished and hunted since the days of his boyhood.

"Don't be alarmed by what Kitty tells you, Mr. Trenby," Nan smiled gently as she spoke and Roger found himself delightedly watching the adorable way her lips curled up at the corners and the faint dimple which came and went. "She considers it a duty to pick holes in poor me—good for my morals, you know."

"It must be a somewhat difficult occupation," he returned, bowing awkwardly.

Into Nan's mind flashed the recollection of a supple, expressive, un-English bow, and of a deftness of phrase compared with which Trenby's laboured compliment savoured of the elephantine. Swiftly she dismissed the memory, irritably chasing it from her mind, for was it not five long, black, incomprehensible weeks since Peter had vanished from her ken? From the day of the bridge-party at the Edenhall flat, she had neither seen nor heard from him, and during those five silent weeks she had come to recognise the fact that Peter meant much more to her than merely a friend, just as he himself had realised that she was the one woman in the world for him. And between them, now and always, stood Celia, the woman in possession.

"Well, then, what about Thursday next for going over to the kennels? Are you disengaged?"

Trenby's voice broke suddenly across her reverie. She threw him a brilliant smile.

"Yes. Thursday would do very well."

"Agreed, then. I'll call for you at half-past ten," said Trenby. "Well"—rising reluctantly to his feet—"I must be moving on now. I have to go over one of my off-farms before dinner, so I'll say good-bye."

He lifted his cap and strode away, Nan watching his broad-shouldered well-knit figure with reflective eyes, the while irrepressible little gurgles and explosions of mirth emanated from the hammock.

At last Nan burst out irritably:

"What on earth are you giggling about, Kitty?"

"At the lion endeavouring to lie down with the lamb," submitted Kitty meekly.

"Don't talk in parables."

"It's a very easy one to interpret"—Kitty succumbed once more to a gale of laughter. "It was just too delicious to watch you and Roger together! You'd much better leave him alone, my dear, and play with the dolls you're used to."

"How detestable you are, Kitty. I promise you one thing—it's going to be much worse for the lion than the lamb."

Mrs. Barry Seymour sat up suddenly, the laughter dying out of her eyes.

"Nan," she admonished, "you leave Roger alone. He's as Nature made him and not fair game for such as you. Leave him to some simple country maiden—Edna Langdon, for instance, who rides straight to hounds and whose broad acres—or what will be her broad acres when Papa Langdon is gathered—'march' with his."

"Surely I can out-general her?"—impertinently.

"Out-general her? Of course you can. But that's just what you mustn't do. I won't allow you to play with Roger. He's too good a sort—even if he is a bit heavy in hand."

"I agree. He's quite a good sort. But he needs educating. . . . And perhaps I'm not going to 'play' with him."

"Not? Then what . . . Nan, you never mean to suggest that you're in earnest?"

Nan regarded her consideringly.

"And why not, pray? Isn't he well-seeming? Hasn't he broad acres of his own? Do I not find favour in his eyes? . . . Surely the last four weeks have shown you that much?"

Kitty made a small grimace.

"They certainly have. But seriously, this is all nonsense, Nan. You and Roger Trenby are about as unsuited to each other as any man and woman could possibly be. In addition to which he has the temper of a fiend when roused—and you'd be sure to rouse him! You know a dozen men more suitable!"

"Do I? It seems to me I'm particularly destitute of men friends just now, either 'suitable' or otherwise. They've been giving me the cold shoulder lately with commendable frequency. So why not the M.F.H. and his acres?"

Kitty detected the bitter, hurt note in her voice, and privately congratulated herself on a letter she had posted only the previous evening telling Peter that everything was obviously over between Nan and Maryon Rooke, as the latter had failed to put in an appearance at St. Wennys—and would he come down to Mallow Court? With Peter once more at hand, she felt sure he would be able to charm Nan's bitterness away and even prevent her, in some magical way of his own, from committing such a rash blunder as marriage with Trenby could not fail to be.

She had been feeling rather disturbed about Nan ever since they had come to Mallow. The Nan she knew, wayward, tantalising, yet always lovable, seemed to have disappeared, and instead here was this embittered, moody Nan, very surely filled with some wild notion of defying fate by marrying out of hand and so settling for ever the disappointments of the past—and whatever chances of happiness there might be waiting for her in the lap of destiny. Settling them in favour of one most final and lasting disappointment of them all—of that Kitty felt convinced.

"Nan, don't be a fool!" she insisted vehemently. "You'd be wretched if you married the wrong man—far, far more wretched in the future than you've ever been in the past. You'd only repent that last step once, and that would be—always!"

"My dear Kit, I've taken so many steps that I've repented! But when you're in the middle of a staircase you must inevitably continue taking steps—either up or down. And if I take this one, and repent it—well, at all events it will be the last step."

"Not necessarily," replied Kitty drily.

"Where are you wandering now?" gibed Nan. "Into the Divorce Courts—or the Thames? Surely you know me better than that! I value my creature comforts far too much to exploit either, I assure you. The Divorce Courts are muddy—and the Thames is wet."

Kitty was silent a moment, her heart torn by the bitterness in the girl's voice.

"You'd regret it, I know," she insisted gravely.

Nan rose from her cushions, swinging her hat in her hand.

"Always remembering that a prophet hath no honour in his own country," she commented curtly over her shoulder, and sauntered away towards the house, defiantly humming the air of a scandalous little French song as she went.

Kitty sank back into the hammock, lighting a cigarette to aid her meditations. Truly matters had gone very crookedly. Maryon Rooke had been the first cause of all the trouble. Then she herself had intervened to distract Nan's thoughts by asking Peter to be a pal to her. And the net result of it all was that Peter, irrevocably bound to another woman, had fallen in love with Nan, while the latter was philandering desperately with a totally unsuitable second string.

"Dreaming, Kitty?" said a voice, and looking up with the frown still wrinkling her pretty brows, she saw Lord St. John approaching.

"If I am, it must be a nightmare, I think!" she answered lugubriously.

The old man's kindly face took on a look of concern.

"Any nightmare that I can dispel, my dear?"

Kitty patted the fine-bred, wrinkled old hand that rested on the edge of the hammock.

"I know you love to play the fairy godfather to us all, but in this case I'm afraid you can't help. In fact, you've done all you could—made her free to choose."

"It's Nan, then?" he said quickly.

Kitty laughed rather mirthlessly.

"'M. Isn't it always Nan who is causing us anxiety one way or another?"

"And just now?"

"Haven't you guessed? I'm sure you have!"

St. John's lips twisted in a whimsical smile.

"I suppose you mean that six-foot-odd of bone and muscle from Trenby Hall?"

"Of course I mean him! Just because she's miserable over that Rooke business and because Roger is as insistent as a man with that kind of chin always is, she'll be Mrs. Roger before we can stop her—and miserable ever after!"

"Isn't the picture a trifle overdrawn?" St. John pulled forward one of the garden chairs and sat down. "Trenby's a very decent fellow, I should imagine, and comes of good old stock."

"Oh, yes, he's all that." Kitty metaphorically tossed the whole pack of qualifications into the dustbin. "But he's got the devil's own temper when he's roused and he's filled to the brim with good old-fashioned notions about a man being master in his own house, et cetera. And no man will ever be master in his own house while Nan's in it—unless he breaks her."

St. John stirred restlessly.

"Things are a bit complicated sometimes, aren't they?" he said in a rather tired voice. "Still"—with an effort—"we must hope for the best. You've jumped far ahead of the actual state of affairs at present."

"Roger's tagging round after her from morning to night."

"He's not the first man to do that," submitted Lord. St. John, smiling, "Nan is—Nan, you know, and you mustn't assume too much from Roger's liking to be with her. I'm sure if I were one of her contemporary young men, I should 'tag round' just like the rest of 'em. So don't meet trouble half way."

"Optimist!" said Kitty.

"Oh, no." The disclaimer came quickly. "Philosopher."

"I can't be philosophical, unluckily."

"My dear, we have no choice. It isn't we who move the pieces in the game."

A silence followed. Then, as Kitty vaguely murmured something about tea, St. John helped her out of the hammock, and together they strolled towards the house. They found tea in progress on the square lawn facing the sea and every one foregathered there. Nan, apparently in wild spirits, was fooling inimitably, and she bestowed a small, malicious smile on Kitty as she and Lord St. John joined the group around the tea-table.

It was a glorious afternoon. The sea lay dappled with light and shade as the sun and vagrant breezes played with it, while for miles along the coast the great cliffs were wrapt in a soft, quivering haze so that the lines and curves of their vari-coloured strata, and the bleak, sheer menace of their height, as they overhung the blue water lapping on the sands below, were screened from view.

"There are some heavenly sandwiches here," announced Nan. "That is, if Sandy has left any. Have you, Sandy?"

Sandy McBain grinned responsively. He was the somewhat surprising offspring of the union between Nan's Early Victorian aunt, Eliza, and a prosaic and entirely uninteresting Scotsman. Red-haired and freckled, with the high cheekbones of his Celtic forebears, he was a young man of undeniable ugliness, redeemed only by a pair of green eyes as kind and honest as a dog's, and by a voice of surprising charm and sweetness.

"Not many," he replied easily. "I gave you all the largest, anyway."

"Sandy says he hasn't left any," resumed Nan calmly.

"At least, only small ones. We mustn't blame him. What are they made of, Kitty? They'd beguile a fasting saint—let alone a material person like Sandy."

"Salmon paste and cress," replied Mrs. Seymour mildly.

"I bet any money its salmon and shrimp paste," declared Sandy. "And it's the vulgar shrimp which appeals."

He helped himself unostentatiously to another sandwich.

"Your eighth," commented Nan.

"It's the shrimpness of them," he murmured plaintively. "I can't help it."

"Well, draw the line somewhere," she returned. "If we're going to play duets after tea and you continue to absorb sandwiches at your present rate of consumption, you'll soon be incapable of detecting the inherent difference between a quaver and a semibreve."

"Then I shall count," said Sandy.

"No."

"Aloud," he added firmly.

"Sandy, you're a beast!"

"Not a bit. I believe I could compose a symphonic poem under the influence of salmon and shrimp sandwiches—if I had enough of them."

"You've had enough," retorted Nan promptly. "So come along and begin."

She swept him away to the big music-room, where a polished floor and an absence of draperies offered no hindrance to the tones of the beautiful Bluethner piano. Some of the party drifted in from the terrace outside as Sandy's long, boyish fingers began to move capably over the keys, extemporising delightfully.

"If he were only a little older," whispered Kitty to Lord St. John.

"Inveterate match-maker!" he whispered back.

Sandy pulled Nan down on to the music seat beside him.

"The Shrimp Symphony in A flat minor, arranged for four hands," he announced. "Come on, Nan. Time, seven-four—"

"Sandy, don't be ridiculous!"

"Why not seven-four?"—innocently. "You have five-four. Come along. One, two, three, four, five, six, sev'n; one, two, three, four, five—"

And the next moment the two were improvising a farcical duet that in its way was a masterpiece of ingenious musicianship. Thence they passed on to more serious music until finally Sandy was persuaded to produce his violin—he had two, one of which, as he was wont to remark, "lodged" at Mallow. With the help of Penelope and Ralph Fenton, the afternoon was whiled away until a low-toned gong, reverberating through the house was a warning that it was time to dress for dinner, brought the impromptu concert to an abrupt end.



CHAPTER IX

A SKIRMISH WITH DEATH

It was a soft, misty day when Trenby called to drive Nan over to the Trevithick Kennels—one of those veiled mornings which break about noon into a glory of blue sky and golden sunlight.

As she stepped into the waiting car, Roger stopped her abruptly.

"Go back and put on something thicker," he commanded. "It'll be chilly driving in this mist."

"But it's going to be hot later on," protested Nan.

"Yes, only it happens to be now that we're driving—and it will be cool again, in the evening when I bring you back."

Nan laughed.

"Nonsense!" she said and put her foot on the step of the car. Trenby, standing by to help her in, closed his hand firmly round her arm and held her back. His hawk's eyes flashed a little.

"I shan't take you unless you do as I say," he observed.

She stared at him in astonishment. Then she turned away as though to re-enter the house.

"Oh, very well," she replied airily.

Roger bit his lip, then followed her rapidly. He did not in the least like yielding his point.

"Come back, then—and catch a cold if you like!" he said ungraciously.

Nan paused and looked up at him.

"Do you think I should catch cold?"

"It's ten to one you would."

"Then I'll do as I'm bid and get an extra coat."

She went into the house, leaving Trenby rather taken aback by her sudden submission. But it pleased him, nevertheless. He liked a woman to be malleable. It seemed, to him a truly womanly quality—certainly a wifely one! Moreover, almost any man experiences a pleasant feeling of complacency when he thinks he has dominated a woman, even over so small a matter as to whether she shall wear an extra coat or not—although he generally fails to guess the origin of that attractive surrender and comfortably regards it as a tribute to his strong, masculine will-power. Few women are foolish enough to undeceive him.

"Will I do now?" asked Nan, reappearing and stepping lightly into the car.

Roger smiled approvingly and proceeded to tuck the rugs well round her. Then he started the engine and soon they were spinning down the drive which ran to the left of Mallow Court gardens towards the village. They flashed through St. Wennys and turned inland along the great white road that swept away in the direction of Trenby Hall, ten miles distant. The kennels themselves lay a further four miles beyond the Hall.

"Oh, how gorgeous it is!" exclaimed Nan, as their road cut through a wild piece of open country where, with the sea and the tall cliffs behind them, vista after vista of wooded hills and graciously sloping valleys unfolded in front of them.

"Yes, you get some fine scenery inland," replied Trenby. "And the roads are good for motoring. I suppose you don't ride?" he added.

"Why should you suppose that?"

"Well"—a trifle awkwardly—"one doesn't expect a Londoner to know much about country pursuits."

Nan smiled.

"Are you imagining I've spent all my life in a Seven Dials slum?" she asked serenely.

"No, no, of course not. But—"

"But country people take a very limited view of a Londoner. We do sometimes get out of town, you know—and some of us can ride and play games quite nicely! As a matter of fact I hunted when I was about six."

Roger's face lightened, eagerly.

"Oh, then I hope you're staying at Mallow till the hunting season starts? I've a lovely mare I could lend you if you'd let me."

Nan shook her head and made a hasty gesture of dissent.

"Oh, no, no. Quite honestly, I've not ridden for years—and even if I took up riding once more I should never hunt again. I think"—she shrank a little—"it's too cruel."

Trenby regarded her with ingenuous amazement.

"Cruel!" he exclaimed. "Why, it's sport!"

"Magic word!" Nan's lips curled a little. "You say it's 'sport' as though that made it all right."

"So it does," answered Trenby contentedly.

"It may—for the sportsman. But as far as the fox is concerned, it's sheer cruelty."

Trenby drove on without speaking for a short time. Then he said slowly:

"Well, in a way I suppose you're right. But, all the same, it's the sporting instinct—the cultivated sporting instinct—which has made the Englishman what he is. It's that which won the war, you know."

"It's a big price to pay. Couldn't you"—a sudden charming smile curving her lips—"couldn't you do it—I mean cultivate the sporting instinct—by polo and things like that?"

"It's not the same." Trenby shook his head. "You don't understand. It's the desire to find your quarry, to go through anything rather than to let him beat you—no matter how done or tired you feel."

"It may be very good for you," allowed Nan. "But it's very bad luck on the fox. I wouldn't mind so much if he had fair play. But even if he succeeds in getting away from you—beating you, in fact—and runs to earth, you proceed to dig him out. I call that mean."

Trenby was silent again for a moment. Then he asked suddenly:

"What would you do if your husband hunted?"

"Put up with it, I suppose, just as I should put up with his other faults—if I loved him."

Roger made no answer but quickened the speed of the car, letting her race over the level surface of the road, and when next he spoke it was on some quite other topic.

Half an hour later a solid-looking grey house, built in the substantial Georgian fashion and surrounded by trees, came into view. Roger slowed up as the car passed the gates which guarded the entrance to the drive.

"That's Trenby Hall," he said. And Nan was conscious of an impishly amused feeling that just so might Noah, when the Flood began, have announced: "That's my Ark.'"

"You've never been over yet," continued Roger. "But I want you to come one day. I should like you to meet my mother."

A queer little dart of fear shot through her as he spoke.

She felt as though she were being gradually hemmed in.

"It looks a beautiful place," she answered conventionally, though inwardly thinking how she would loathe to live in a solid, square mansion of that type, prosaically dull and shut away from the world by enclosing woods.

Roger looked pleased.

"Yes, it's a fine old place," he said. "Now for the kennels."

Nan breathed a sigh of relief. She had had one instant of anxiety lest he should suggest that, instead of lunching, as arranged, from the picnic basket safely bestowed in the back of the car, they should lunch at the Hall.

Another fifteen minutes brought them to the kennels, Denman, the first whip, meeting them at the gates. He touched his hat and threw a keen glance at Nan. The Master of the Trevithick was not in the habit of bringing ladies to see the kennels, and the whip and his wife had discussed the matter very fully over their supper the previous evening, trying to guess what it might portend. "A new mistress up at the 'All, I shouldn't wonder," asserted Mrs. Denman confidently.

"Hounds all fit, Denman?" asked Trenby in quick, authoritative tones.

"Yes, sir. All 'cept 'Wrangler there—'e's still a bit stiff on that near hind leg he sprained."

As he spoke, he held open the gate for Nan to pass in, and she glanced round with lively interest. A flagged path ran straight ahead, dividing the large paved enclosure reserved for youngsters from the iron-fenced yards inhabited by the older hounds of the pack; while at the back of each enclosure lay the sleeping quarters of roofed and sheltered benches. At the further end of the kennels stood a couple of cottages, where the whips and kennelman lived.

"How beautifully clean it all is!" exclaimed Nan.

The whip smiled with obvious delight.

"If you keep 'ounds, miss, you must keep 'em clean—or they won't be 'ealthy and fit to do their day's work. An' a day's hunting is a day's work for 'ounds, an' no mistake."

"How like a woman to remark about cleanliness first of all!" laughed Roger. "A man would have gone straight to look at the hounds before anything else!"

"I'm going now," replied Nan, approaching the bars of one of the enclosures.

It seemed to her as though she were looking at a perfect sea of white and tan bodies with slowly waving sterns, while at intervals from the big throats came a murmurous sound, rising now and again into a low growl, or the sharp snap of powerful jaws and a whine of rage as a couple or more hounds scuffled together over some private disagreement. At Nan's appearance, drawn by curiosity, some of them approached her gingerly, half-suspicious, half as though anxious to make friends, and, knowing no fear of animals, she thrust her hand through the bars and stroked the great heads and necks.

"Can't we go in? They're such dear things!" she begged.

"Better not," answered Roger. "They don't always like strangers."

"I'm not afraid," she replied mutinously. "Do just open the gate, anyway—please!"

Trenby hesitated.

"Well—" He yielded unwillingly, but Nan's eyes were rather difficult to resist when they appealed. "Open the gate, then, Denman."

He stood close behind her when the gate was opened, watching the hounds narrowly, and now and again uttering an imperative, "Down, Victor! Get down, Marquis!" when one or other of the great beasts playfully leapt up against Nan's side, pawing at her in friendly fashion. Meanwhile Denman had quietly disappeared, and when he returned he carried a long-lashed hunting-crop in his hand.

Nan was smoothing first one tan head, then another, receiving eager caresses from rough, pink tongues in return, and insensibly she had moved step by step further into the yard to reach this or that hound as it caught her attention.

"Come back!" called Trenby hastily. "Don't go any further."

Perhaps the wind carried his voice away from her, or perhaps she was so preoccupied with the hounds that the meaning of his words hardly penetrated her mind. Whichever it may have been, with a low cry of, "Oh, you beauty!" she stepped quickly towards Vengeance, one of the best hounds in the pack, a fierce-looking beast with a handsome head and sullen month, who had been standing apart, showing no disposition to join the clamorous, slobbering throng at the gate.

His hackles rose at Nan's sudden movement towards him, and as she stretched out her hand to stroke him the sulky head lifted with a thunderous growl. As though at a given signal the whole pack seemed to gather round her.