"You don't care for him." It was more an assertion, than a question, though it demanded a reply.

"No."

His grasp of her hands tightened.

"Then, for God's sake, don't make the same hash of your life as I made of mine. Believe me, Nan"—his voice roughened—"it's far worse to be married to someone you don't love than to remain unmarried all your days."



CHAPTER XIV

RELATIONS-IN-LAW

"I am very glad to meet you, my dear."

The frosty voice entirely failed to confirm the sense of the words as Lady Gertrude Trenby bent forward and imprinted a somewhat chilly kiss on Nan's cheek.

She was a tall woman, thin and aristocratic-looking, with a repressive manner that inspired her domestic staff with awe and her acquaintances with a nervous anxiety to placate her.

Nan shrank sensitively, and glanced upward to see if there were anything in her future mother-in-law's face which might serve to contradict the coldness of her greeting. But there was nothing. It was a stern, aquiline type of face, with a thin-lipped mouth and hard, obstinate chin, and the iron-grey hair, dressed in a high, stiff fashion, which suggested that no single hair would ever be allowed to stray from its lawful place, seemed to emphasise its severity.

The chilly welcome, then, was intentional—not the result of shyness or a natural awkwardness with strangers. Lady Gertrude was perfectly composed, and Nan felt an inward conviction that the news of Roger's engagement had not met with her approval. Perhaps she resented the idea of relinquishing the reins of government at Trenby Hall in favour of a daughter-in-law. It was quite possible, few mothers of sons who have retained their bachelorhood as long as Roger enjoy being relegated to the position of dowager. They have reigned too long to relish abdication.

As Nan replied conventionally to Lady Gertrude's greeting, some such thoughts as these flashed fugitively through her mind, and with them came a rather tender, girlish determination, to make the transition as easy as possible to the elder woman when the time came for it. The situation made a quick appeal to her eager sympathies. She could imagine so exactly how she herself would detest it if she were in the other woman's position. Somewhat absorbed in this line of thought, she followed her hostess into a stiff and formal-looking drawing-room which conveyed the same sense of frigidity as Lady Gertrude's welcome.

There are some rooms you seem to know and love almost the moment you enter them, while with others you feel that you will never get on terms of friendliness. Nan suddenly longed for the dear, comfortable intimacy of the panelled hall at Mallow, with its masses of freshly-cut flowers making a riot of colour against the dark oak background, its Persian rugs dimmed to a mellow richness by the passage of time, and the sweet, "homey" atmosphere of it all.

Behind her back she made a desperate little gesture to Roger that he should follow her, but he shook his head laughingly and went off in another direction, thinking in his unsubtle mind that this was just the occasion for his mother and his future wife to get well acquainted.

He felt sure that Nan's charm would soon overcome the various objections which Lady Gertrude had raised to the engagement when he had first confided his news to her. She had not minced matters.

"But, my dear Roger, from all I've heard, Nan Davenant is a most unsuitable woman to be your wife. For one thing, she is, I believe, a professional pianist." The thin lips seemed to grow still thinner as they propounded the indictment.

Most people, nowadays, would have laughed outright, but Roger, being altogether out of touch with the modern attitude towards such matters, regarded his mother's objection as quite a normal and reasonable one. It must be overcome in this particular instance, that was all.

"But, of course, Nan will give up everything of that kind when she's my wife," he asserted confidently. And quite believed it, since he had a touching faith in the idea that a woman can be "moulded" by her husband.

"Roger has rather taken me by surprise with the news of his engagement," said Lady Gertrude, after she and Nan had exchanged a few laboured platitudes. "Do you think you will be happy with him? We live a very simple country existence here, you know."

To Nan, the use of the word "we" sounded rather as though she were proposing to marry the family.

"Oh, I like country life very much," she replied. "After all, you can always vary the monotony by running up to town or going abroad, can't you?"

"I don't think Roger cares much for travelling about. He is extremely attached to his home. We have always made everything so easy and comfortable for him here, you see," responded Lady Gertrude, with a certain significance.

Nan surmised she was intended to gather that it would be her duty to make everything "so easy and comfortable" for him in the future! She almost smiled. Most of the married men she knew were kept busy seeing that everything was made easy and comfortable for their wives.

"Still," continued Lady Gertrude, "there could be no objection to your making an occasional trip to London."

She had a dry, decisive method of speech which gave one the impression she was well accustomed to laying down the law—and that her laws were expected to remain unbroken. The "occasional trip to London" sounded bleakly in Nan's ears. Still, she argued, Lady Gertrude would only be her mother-in-law—and she was sure she could "manage" Roger. There is a somewhat pathetic element in the way in which so many people light-heartedly enter into marriage, the man confident in his ability to "mould" his wife, the woman never doubting her power to "manage" him. It all seems quite simple during the adaptable period of engagement, when romance spreads a veil of glamour over the two people concerned, effectually concealing for the time being the wide gulf of temperament that lies between them. It is only after the knot has been tied that the unlooked-for difficulties of managing and moulding present themselves.

Nan found it increasingly difficult to sustain her side of the conversation with Lady Gertrude. The latter's old-fashioned views clashed violently with her own modern ones, and there seemed to be no mutual ground upon which they could meet. Like her son, Lady Gertrude clung blindly to the narrow outlook of a bygone period, and her ideas of matrimony were based strictly upon the English Marriage Service.

She had not realised that the Great War had created a different world from the one she had always known, and that women had earned their freedom as individuals by sharing the burden of the war side by side with men. Nor had Roger infused any fresh ideas into her mind on his return from serving in the Army. He had volunteered immediately war broke out, his sense of duty and loyalty to his country being as sturdy as his affection for every foot of her good brown earth he had inherited. But he was not an impressionable man, and when peace finally permitted him to return to his ancestral acres, he settled down again quite happily into the old routine at Trenby Hall.

So it was hardly surprising that Lady Gertrude had remained unchanged, expecting and requiring that the world should still run smoothly on—without even a side-slip!—in the same familiar groove as that to which she had always been accustomed. This being so, it was quite clear to her that Nan would require a considerable amount of tutelage before she was fit to be Roger's wife. And she was equally prepared to give it.

In some inexplicable manner her attitude of mind conveyed itself to Nan, and the latter was rebelliously conscious of the older woman's efforts to dominate her. It came as an inexpressible relief when at last their tete-a-tete was interrupted.

Through the closed door Nan could hear Roger's voice. He was evidently engaged in cheerful conversation with someone in the hall outside—a woman, from the light trill of laughter which came in response to some remark of his—and a moment later the door opened and Nan could see his head and shoulders towering above those of the woman who preceded him into the room.

"Isobel, my dear!"

For the first time since the beginning of their interview Nan heard Lady Gertrude's voice soften to a more human note. Turning to Nan she continued, still in the same affectionate tone of voice:

"This is my niece, Isobel Carson—though she is really more like a daughter to me."

"So it looks as though we shall be sisters!" put in the newcomer lightly. "Really"—with a quick, bird-like glance, that included everyone in the room—"our relationships will get rather mixed up, won't they?"

She held out a rather claw-like little hand for Nan to shake, and the unexpectedly tense and energetic grip of it was somewhat surprising. She was a small, dark creature with bright, restless brown eyes set in a somewhat sallow face—its sallowness the result of several husband-hunting years spent in India, where her father had held a post in the Indian Civil Service.

It was one of those rather incomprehensible happenings of life that she had been left still blooming on her virgin stem. It would have been difficult to guess her exact age. She owned to thirty-four, and a decade ago, when she had first joined her father in India, she must have possessed a certain elfish prettiness of her own. Now, thanks to those years spent under a tropical sun, she was a trifle faded and passee-looking.

Following upon the advent of Roger and his cousin the conversation became general for a few minutes, then Lady Gertrude drew her son towards a French window opening on to the garden—a garden immaculately laid out, with flower-beds breaking the expanse of lawn at just the correct intervals—and eventually she and Roger passed out of the room to discuss with immense seriousness the shortcomings of the gardener as exemplified in the shape of one of the geranium beds.

"You won't like it here!" observed Isobel Carson rather bluntly, when the two girls were left alone.

"Why shouldn't I?" Nan smiled.

"Because you won't fit in at all. You'll be like a rocket battering about in the middle of a set piece."

Isobel lacked neither brains nor observation, though she had been wise enough to conceal both these facts from Lady Gertrude.

"Don't you like it here, then?"

Isobel regarded her thoughtfully, as though speculating how far she dared be frank.

"Of course I like it. But it's Hobson's choice with me," she replied rather grimly. "When my father died I was left with very little money and no special training. Result—I spent a hateful year as nursery governess to a couple of detestable brats. Then Aunt Gertrude invited me here on a visit—and that visit has prolonged itself up till the present moment. She finds me very useful, you know," she added cynically.

"Yes, I suppose she does," answered Nan, with some embarrassment. She felt no particular desire to hear a resume of Miss Carson's past life. There was something in the girl which repelled her.

As though she sensed the other's distaste to the trend the conversation had taken, Miss Carson switched briskly off to something else, and by the time Lady Gertrude returned with Roger, suggesting that they should go in to lunch, Nan had forgotten that odd feeling of repulsion which Isobel had first aroused in her, and had come to regard her as "quite a nice little thing who had had rather a rotten time."

This was the impression Lady Gertrude's niece contrived to make on most people. It suited her very well and secured her many gifts and pleasures which would not otherwise have come her way. She had accepted her aunt's invitation to stay at Trenby Hall rather guardedly in the first instance, but when, as the visit drew towards its end, Lady Gertrude had proposed that she should make her home there altogether, she had jumped at the offer.

She speedily discovered that she and Trenby had many tastes in common, and with the sharp instinct of a woman who has tried hard to achieve a successful marriage and failed, there appeared to her no reason why in this instance "something should not come of it"—to use the time-honoured phrase which so delicately conveys so much. And but for the fact that Nan Davenant was staying at Mallow, something might have come of it! Since community of tastes is responsible for many a happy and contented marriage.

Throughout the time she had lived at Trenby Hall, Isobel had contrived to make herself almost indispensable to Roger. If a "damned button" flew off his coat, she was always at hand with needle and thread, and a quaint carved ivory thimble crowning one small finger, to sew it on again. Or should his dress tie decline to adorn his collar in precisely the proper manner, those nimble, claw-like little fingers could always produce a well-tied bow in next to no time. It was Isobel who found all the things which, manlike, he so constantly mislaid, who tramped over the fields with him, interesting herself in all the outdoor side of his life, and she was almost as good at landing a trout as he himself.

There seemed small likelihood of Roger's going far afield in search of a wife, so that Isobel had not apprehended much danger to her hopes—more especially as she had a shrewd idea that Lady Gertrude would look upon the marriage with the selfish approval of a woman who gains a daughter without losing the services of a niece who is "used to her ways."

Such a union need not even upset existing arrangements. Isobel had learned by long experience how to "get on" amicably with her autocratic relative, and the latter could remain—as her niece knew very well she would wish to remain at Trenby Hall, still nominally its chatelaine.

Lady Gertrude and Isobel had never been frequent visitors at Mallow, and it had so happened that neither they, nor Roger on the rare occasions when he was home on leave from the Front, had chanced to meet Nan Davenant during her former visits to Mallow Court.

Now that she had seen her, Isobel's ideas were altogether bouleversee. Never for a single instant would she have imagined that a woman of Nan's type—artistic, emotional, elusive—could attract a man like Roger Trenby. The fact remained, however, that Nan had succeeded where hitherto she herself had failed, and Isobel's dreams of a secure future had come tumbling about her ears. She realised bitterly that love is like quicksilver, running this way or that at its own sweet will—and rarely into the channel we have ordained for it.



CHAPTER XV

KING ARTHUR'S CASTLE

The first person whom Nan encountered on her return from Trenby Hall was Mrs. Seymour. The latter's eyebrows lifted quizzically.

"Well?" she asked. "How did it go?"

"It didn't 'go' at all!" answered Nan. "I was enveloped in an atmosphere of severe disapproval. In fact, I think Lady Gertrude considers I require quite a long course of training before I'm fitted to be Roger's wife."

"Nonsense!" Kitty smiled broadly.

"Seriously"—nodding. "Apparently the kind of wife she really wants for him is a combination of the doormat and fetch-and-carry person who always stays at home, and performs her wifely and domestic duties in a spirit of due subservience."

"She'll live and learn, then, my dear, when she has you for a daughter-in-law," commented Kitty drily.

"I think I'm a bit fed up with 'in-laws,'" returned Nan a trifle wearily. "I'll go out and walk it off. Or, better still, lend me your bike, Kitty, and I'll just do a spin to Tintagel. By the time I've climbed up to King Arthur's Castle, I'll feel different. It always makes me feel good to get to the top of anywhere."

"But, my dear, it's five o'clock already! You won't have time to go there before dinner."

"Yes, I shall," persisted Nan. "Half an hour to get there—easily! An hour for the castle, half an hour for coming back, and then just time enough to skip into a dinner-frock. . . . I must go, really, Kitten," she went on with a note of urgency in her voice. "That appalling drawing-room at Trenby and almost equally appalling dining-room have got into my system, and I want to blow the germs away." She gesticulated expressively.

"All right, you ridiculous person, take my bicycle then," replied Kitty good-humouredly. "But what will you do when you have to live in those rooms?"

"Why, I shall alter them completely, of course. I foresee myself making the Hall 'livable in' throughout the first decade of my married existence!"—with a small grimace of disgust.

A few minutes later Nan was speeding along the road to Tintagel, the cool air, salt with brine from the incoming tide, tingling against her face.

In less than the stipulated half-hour she had reached the village—that bleak, depressing-looking village, with its miscellany of dull little houses, through which one must pass, as through some dreary gateway, to reach the wild, sea-girt beauty of the coast itself. Leaving her cycle in charge at a cottage, Nan set out briskly on foot down the steep hill that led to the shore. She was conscious of an imperative need for movement. She must either cycle, or walk, or climb, in order to keep at bay the nervous dread with which her visit to Trenby had inspired her. It had given her a picture of Roger's home and surroundings—a brief, enlightening glimpse as to the kind of life she might look forward to when she had married him.

It was all very different from what she had anticipated. Even Roger himself seemed different in the environment of his home—less spontaneous, less the adoring lover. Lady Gertrude's influence appeared to dominate the whole house and everyone in it. But, as Nan realised, she had given her promise to Roger, and too much hung on that promise for her to break it now—Penelope's happiness, and her own craving to shut herself away in safety, to bind herself so that she could never again break free.

Her unexpected meeting with Peter the previous evening had shown her once and for all the imperative need for this. The clasp of his hand, the strong hold of his arms about her as he bore her across the stream, the touch of his lips against her hair—the memory of these things had been with her all night. She had tried to thrust them from her, but they refused to be dismissed. More than once she had buried her hot face in the coolness of the pillows, conscious of a sudden tremulous thrill that ran like fire through all her veins.

And that Peter, too, knew they stood on dangerous quicksands when they were alone together, she was sure. This morning, beyond a briefly-worded greeting at breakfast, he had hardly spoken to her, carefully avoiding her, though without seeming to do so, until her departure to Trenby Hall made it no longer necessary. She hoped he would not stay long at Mallow. It would be unbearable to meet him day after day—to feel his eyes resting upon her with the same cool gravity to which he had compelled them this morning, to pretend that he and she meant no more to one another than any two other chance guests at a country house.

Nan's thoughts drove her swiftly down the steep incline which descended towards the cove and, arriving at its foot, she stopped, as everyone must, to obtain the key of the castle from a near-by cottage. The old dame who gave her the key—accepting a shilling in exchange with voluble gratitude—impressed upon her the urgent necessity for returning it on her way back.

"If you please, lady, I've lost more than one key with folks forgettin' to return them," she explained.

"I won't forget," Nan assured her, and forthwith started to make her way to the top of the great promontory on which stands all that still remains of King Arthur's Castle—the fallen stones of an ancient chapel, and a ruined wall enclosing a grassy space where sheep browse peacefully.

Quitting the cottage and turning to the left, she bent her steps towards a footbridge spanning a gap in the cliff side and, pausing at the bridge, let her eyes rest musingly on the great, mysterious opening picturesquely known as Merlin's Cave. The tide was coming in fast, and she could hear the waves boom hollowly as they slid over its stony floor, only to meet and fight the opposing rush of other waves from the further end—since what had once been the magician's cave was now a subterranean passage, piercing right through the base of the headland.

For a while Nan loitered on the bridge, gazing at the wild beauty of the scene—the sombre cove where the inrushing waves broke in a smother of spume on the beach, and above, to the left, the wind-scarred, storm-beaten crag rising sheer and wonderful out of the turbulent sea and crowned by those ancient walls about which clung so much of legend and romance.

Perhaps the magic of old Merlin's enchantments still lingered there, for as Nan stood silently absorbing the mysterious glamour of the place, the petty annoyances of the day, the fret of Lady Gertrude's unwelcoming reception of her, seemed to dwindle into insignificance. They were only external things, after all. They could not mar the loveliness of this mystic, legend-haunted corner of the world.

At length, with a faint sigh of regret, she crossed the bridge and walked slowly up a path which appeared to be little more than a rough track hewn out of the rocky side of the cliff itself, uneven and strewn with loose stones. Nan picked her steps gingerly. At the top of the track her way turned sharply at right angles to where a narrow ridge—so narrow that two people could not walk it abreast—led to Tintagel Head. It was the merest neck of land, very steep on either hand, like a slender bridge connecting what the Cornish folk generally speak of as "the Island" with the mainland.

Nan proceeded to cross the narrow ridge. She was particularly surefooted as a rule, her supple body balancing itself instinctively. But to-day, for the first time, she felt suddenly nervous as she neared the crag and, glancing downward, caught sight of the sullen billows thundering far below on either side. Perhaps the events of the day had frayed her nerves more than she knew. It was only by an effort that she dismissed the unaccustomed sensation of malaise which had assailed her and determinedly began the ascent to the castle by way of a series of primitively rough-hewn steps. They were slippery and uneven, worn and polished by the tread of the many feet which had ascended and descended them, and guarded only by a light hand-rail that seemed almost to quiver in her grasp as, gripped by another unexpected rush of fear, Nan caught at it in feverish haste.

She stood quite still—suddenly panic-stricken. Here, half-way up the side of the steep promontory, the whole immensity of the surrounding height and depth came upon her in a terrifying flash of realisation. From below rose the reiterated boom of the baulked waves, each thud against the base of the great crag seeming to shake her whole being, while, whichever way she looked, menacing headlands towered stark and pitiless above the sea. She felt like a fly on the wall of some abysmal depth—only without the fly's powers of adhesion.

Very carefully she twisted her body sideways, intending to retrace her steps, but in an instant the sight of the surging waters—miles and miles below, as it seemed—sent her crouching to the ground. She could not go back! She felt as though her limbs were paralysed, and she knew that if she attempted to descend some incalculable force would drive her straight over the edge, hurtling helplessly to the foot of those rugged cliffs.

For a moment she closed her eyes. Only by dogged force of will could she even retain her present position, half crouching, half lying on the ill-matched steps. It almost seemed as though some power were drawing her, compelling her to relax her muscles and slide down, down into those awful depths. Then the memory of a half-caught phrase she had overheard flashed across her mind: "If you feel giddy, always look up, not down." As though in obedience to some inner voice, she opened her eyes and looked up to where, only a few battered steps above, she could see the door of the castle.

If she could only make it! Rising cautiously to her knees she crawled up one more step and rested a moment, digging her fingers into the crevices of the rock and finding a precarious foothold against a projecting ledge. Keeping her eyes fixed upon the door she scrambled up a few inches further, then paused again, exhausted with the strain.

Two more steps remained. Two more desperate efforts, while she fought the hideous temptation to look downwards. For an instant she almost lost all knowledge of what she was doing. Guided only by instinct—the instinct of self-preservation—her eyes still straining painfully in that enforced upward gaze, she at last reached the door.

With a strangled sob of relief she knelt up against it and inserted the big iron key, with numbed fingers turning it in the lock. The heavy door opened, and Nan clung to it with both hands till it had swung back sufficiently to admit her. Then, from the security of the castle itself, she pushed it to and locked it on the inside, as the old woman at the cottage had bidden her, thrusting the key into the pocket of her sports coat.

She was safe! Around her were the walls of the ancient castle—walls that seemed almost part of the solid rock itself standing betwixt her and that horrible abyss below! . . . Her limbs gave way suddenly and she toppled over in a dead faint, lying in a little crumpled heap at the foot of the wall.

It was very quiet up there within King Arthur's Castle. The tourists who, mayhap, had visited it earlier in the day were gone; no one would come again to-night to disturb the supreme stillness. The wan cry of the gulls drifted eerily across the sea. Once an enquiring sheep approached the slim young body lying there, stirless and inert, and sniffed at it, then moved away again and lay down to chew the cud.

The golden disc of the sun dropped steadily lower in the sky. . . .

* * * * * *

"Nan's very late."

Mrs. Seymour made the statement rather blankly. Dinner had been announced and the house-party were gathered together in the hall round the great hearth fire. The summer day had chilled to a cool evening, as so often happens by the sea, and the ruddy flames diffused a cheery glow of warmth.

"Perhaps Lady Gertrude is keeping her to dinner," said Lord St. John. "It's very probable." As he spoke he held out his hands to the fire—withered old hands that looked somehow frailer than their wont.

Kitty shook her head.

"No. She—I don't think she enjoyed her visit overmuch, and, when she came back she went out cycling—to 'work it off,'" she said.

"Where did she go?" inquired Penelope.

"To Tintagel. I told her she wouldn't have time enough to get there and back before dinner. Never mind. We'll begin, and I'll order something to be kept hot for her."

Accordingly they all adjourned to the dining-room and dinner proceeded in its usual leisurely fashion, although the gay chatter that generally accompanied it was absent. Everyone seemed conscious of a certain uneasiness.

"I wish young Nan would come back," remarked Barry at last, looking up abruptly from the fish he was dissecting. A shade of anxiety clouded his lazy blue eyes. "I hope she's not come a cropper down one of these confounded hills."

He voiced the restless feeling of suspense which was beginning to pervade the whole party.

"What time did she start, Kit?" he went on.

"About five o'clock, I should think, or soon after."

"Then she'd have had loads of time to get back by now."

The general tension took the form of a sudden silence. Then Peter Mallory spoke, very quietly:

"She didn't propose going up to the castle, did she?" In spite of its quietness his voice had a certain clipped sound that drove home the significance of his question.

"Yes, she did." Kitty tried to reassure herself. "But she's as surefooted as a deer. We all went up the other day and Nan was by far the best climber amongst us."

Almost simultaneously Peter and Barry were on their feet.

"Something may have happened, all the same," said Barry with concern. "She might have sprained her ankle—or—or anything."

He turned to the servant nearest him.

"Tell Atkinson to get the car round and to be quick about it."

"Very good, sir." And the man disappeared on his errand.

In a moment the thought that a possible accident might have befallen Nan broke up the party. Kitty and Penelope hurried off in quest of rugs and sandwiches and brandy—anything that might be of service, while the men drew together, conversing in low voices while they waited for the car.

"You'll find her, Barry?" St. John's voice shook a little. "You'll bring her back safe?"

"I'll bring her back." Barry laid kindly hands on the old man's shoulders which had seemed suddenly to stoop as though beneath a burden. "Don't worry. I expect she's only had some trifling mishap. Burst a tyre probably and is walking back."

St. John's look of acute anxiety relaxed a little.

"I hope so," he muttered, "I hope so."

A servant opened the door.

"The car's waiting, sir."

"Good." Barry strode into the hall, Mallory following him.

"Barry, I must go with you," he said hoarsely.

In the blaze of the electric light the two men looked hard into each other's faces. Then Barry nodded.

"Right. I'll leave the chauffeur behind and drive myself. We must have plenty of room at the back in case Nan's hurt." He paused, then held out his hand. "I'm damned sorry, old man."

"I suppose Kitty told you?"

"Yes. She told me."

"I think I'm rather glad you know," said Peter simply.

Then, hurrying into their coats, the two men ran out to the car and a moment later they were tearing along the road, their headlights blazing like angry stars beneath the calm, sweet light of the moon overhead.

The old dame who kept the keys of the castle rose from her supper as the honk, honk of a motor-horn broke on her startled ears. People didn't come to visit the castle at this time of night! But the purr of the engine outside her cottage, and the long beams of light flung seawards by the headlights, brought her quickly to the door.

"We want a key—for the castle," shouted Barry, while to expedite matters Peter sprang out of the car and went to the floor of the cottage.

"The key!" he cried out.

She extended her hand, thinking he had brought one back.

"Ah, I knew I'd missed one," she said. She shook a lean forefinger at him reprovingly: "So 'twas you run off with it! I'm obliged to you for bringing it again, sir. I couldn't rightly remember whether 'twas a young lady or gentleman who'd had it. There's so many comes for a key and—"

"It was a lady. She's up there now, we think. And I want another key to get in with. She may have been taken ill."

Peter's curt explanation stemmed her ready stream of talk abruptly. Snatching the key which she took down from a peg on the wall he returned to the car with it. Barry was still sitting behind the steering wheel. He bent forward, as Peter approached.

"You go," he said, with a bluntness that masked an infinite understanding. "There's the brandy flask"—bringing it out of a side pocket. "If you want help, blow this hooter." He had detached one of the horns from the car. "If not—well, I shall just wait here till you come back."



CHAPTER XVI

SACRED TROTH

The tide was at its full when Peter began the ascent to King Arthur's Castle—the sea a vast stretch of quivering silver fringed with a mist of flying spray. In the strange, sharp lights and shadows cast by the round moon overhead, the great crags of the promontory jutted out like the turrets of some ancient fortress—blackly etched against the tender, irresolute blue of the evening sky.

But Peter went on unheedingly. The mystic charm had no power to hold him to-night. The only thing that mattered was Nan—her safety. Was she lying hurt somewhere within the crumbling walls of the castle? Or had she missed her footing and plunged headlong into that sea which boomed incessantly against the cliffs? It wasn't scenery that mattered. It was life—and death!

Very swiftly he mounted to the castle door, looking from side to side as he went for any trace which might show that Nan had passed this way. As he climbed the last few feet he shouted her name: "Nan! Nan!" But there came no answer. Only the sea still thundered below and a startled gull flew out from a cranny, screaming as it flew.

Mallory's hand shook a little as he thrust the key into the heavy lock. Practically all that remained of hope lay behind that closed door. Then, as it opened, a great cry broke from him, hoarse with relief from the pent-up agony of the last hour.

She lay there just like a child asleep, snuggled against the wall, one arm curved behind her head, pillowing it. At the sound of his voice she stirred, opening bewildered, startled eyes. In an instant he was kneeling beside her.

"Don't be frightened, Nan. It's I—Peter. Are you hurt?"

"Peter?" She repeated the name dreamingly, hardly yet awake, and her voice held almost a caress in its soft tones.

Mallory bit back a groan. To hear her speak his name on that little note of happiness hurt incredibly.

"Nan—wake up!" he urged gently.

She woke then—came back to a full sense of her surroundings.

"You, Peter?" she murmured surprisedly. She made an effort to sit up, then sank back against the wall, uttering a sharp cry of distress.

"Where are you hurt?" asked Mallory with quick anxiety.

She shook her head at him, smiling reassuringly.

"I'm not hurt. I'm only stiff. You'll have to help me up, Peter."

He stooped and raised her, and at last she stood up, ruefully rubbing the arm which had been curled behind her head while she slept.

"My arm's gone to sleep. It's all pins and needles!" she complained.

Slung over his shoulders Peter carried an extra wrap for her. Whatever had happened, whether she were hurt or merely stranded somewhere, he knew she would not be warmly enough clad to meet the sudden coolness of the evening.

"You must be nearly perished with cold—asleep up here! Put this on," he said quickly.

"No, really"—she pushed aside the woollen coat he tendered. "I'm not cold. It was quite sheltered here under this wall."

"Put it on," he repeated quietly. "Do as I tell you—little pal."

At that she yielded and he helped her on with the coat, fastening it carefully round her.

"And now tell me what possessed you to go to sleep up here?" he demanded.

In a few words she related what had happened, winding up:

"Afterwards, I suppose I must have fainted. Oh!"—with a shiver of remembrance—"It was simply ghastly! I've never felt giddy in my life before—and hope I never may again! It's just as if the bottom of the world had fallen out and left you hanging in mid-air! . . . I knew I couldn't face the climb down again, so—so I just went to sleep. I thought some of you would be sure to come to look for me."

"You knew I should come," he said, a sudden deep insistence in his voice. "Nan, didn't you know it?"

She lifted her head.

"Yes. I think—I think I knew you would come, Peter," she answered unsteadily.

The moonlight fell full upon her—upon a white, strained face with passionate, unkissed lips, and eyes that looked bravely into his, refusing to shirk the ultimate significance which underlay his question.

With a stifled exclamation he swept her up into his arms and his mouth met hers in the first kiss that had ever passed between them—a kiss which held infinite tenderness, and the fierce passion that is part of love, and a foreshadowing of the pain of separation.

"My beloved!" He held her a little away from him so that he might look into her face. Then with a swift, passionate eagerness; "Say that you love me, Nan?"

"Why, Peter—Peter, you know it," she cried tremulously. "It doesn't need telling, dear. . . . Only—it's forbidden."

"Yes," he assented gravely. "It's forbidden us. But now—just this once—let us have a few moments, you and I alone, when there's no need to pretend we don't care—when we can be ourselves!"

"No—no—" she broke in breathlessly.

"It's not much, to ask—five minutes together out of the whole of life! Roger can't grudge them. He'll have you—always." His arms closed jealously round her.

"Yes—always," she repeated. With a sudden choked cry she clung to him despairingly.

"Peter, sometimes I feel I can't bear it! Oh, why were we allowed to care like this?"

"God knows!" he muttered.

He released his hold of her abruptly and began pacing up and down—savagely, like some caged beast. Nan stood staring out over the moon-washed sea with eyes that saw nothing. The five minutes they had snatched together from the rest of life were slipping by—each one a moment of bitter and intolerable anguish.

Presently Peter swung round and came to her side. But he did not touch her. His face looked drawn, and his eyes burned smoulderingly—like fire half-quenched.

"Nan, if I didn't care so much, I'd ask you to go away with me. I—don't quite know what life will be like without you—hell, probably. But at least it's going to be my own little hell and I'm not going to drag you down into it. I'm bound irrevocably. And you—you're bound, too. You can't play fast and loose with the promise you've given Trenby. So we've just got to face it out." He broke off abruptly. Tiny beads of sweat rimmed his upper lip and his hands hung clenched at his sides. Even Nan hardly realised the effort his restraint was costing him.

"What—what do you mean, Peter?" she asked haltingly.

"I mean that I'm going away—that I mustn't see you any more."

A cry fled from her lips—denying, supplicating, and at the desolate sound of it a tremor ran through his limbs. It was as though his body fought and struggled against the compelling spirit within it.

"We mustn't meet again," he went on steadily.

"Not meet—ever—do you mean?" There was something piteous in the young, shaken voice.

"Never, if we can help it. We must go separate ways, Nan."

She tried to speak, but her lips moved soundlessly. Only her eyes, meeting his, held a mute agony that tortured him. All at once his self-control gave way, and the passion of love and longing against which he had been fighting swept aside the barriers which circumstance had placed about it. His arms went round her, holding her close while he rained kisses on her throat and lips and eyes—fierce, desperate kisses that burned against her face. And Nan kissed him back, yielding up her soul upon her lips, knowing that after this last passionate farewell there could he no more giving or receiving. Only a forgetting.

. . . At last they drew apart from one another, though Peter's arms still held her, but only tenderly as for the last time.

"This is good-bye, dearest of all," he said presently.

"Yes," she answered gravely. "I know."

"Heart's beloved, try not to be too sad," he went on. "Try to find happiness in other things. We can never be together—never be more than friends, but I shall be your lover always—always, Nan—through this world into the next."

Her hand stole into his.

"As I yours, Peter."

It was as though some solemn pledge had passed between them—a spiritual troth which nothing in this world could either touch or tarnish. Neither Peter's marriage nor the rash promise Nan had given to Roger could impinge on it. It would carry them through the complex disarray of this world to the edge of the world beyond.

Some time passed before either of them spoke again. Then Peter said quite simply:

"We must go home, dear."

She nodded, and together, hand in hand, they descended from the old castle which must have witnessed so many loves and griefs and partings in King Arthur's time, keeping them secret in its bosom as it would keep secret this later farewell.

They were very silent on the way back. Just at the end, before they turned the corner where the car awaited them, Peter spoke to her again, taking both her hands in his for the last time and holding them in a firm, steady clasp.

"Don't forget, Nan, what we said just now. We can each remember that—our troth. Hang on to it—hard, when life seems a bit more uphill than usual."



CHAPTER XVII

"THE KEYS OF HEAVEN"

Nan awoke the next morning to find the sunlight pouring into her room. Outside, the notes of a bird's song lilted very sweetly on the air, while the creamy head of a rose tapped now and again at the window as though bidding her come out and share in the glory of the summer's day. She had slept far into the morning—the deep, dreamless slumber of utter mental and physical exhaustion. And now, waking, she stared about her bewilderedly, unable at first to recall where she was or what had happened.

But that blessed lack of realisation did not last for long. Almost immediately the recollection of all that had occurred yesterday rushed over her with stunning force, and the sunlight, the bird song, and that futile rose tapping softly there against the window-pane, seemed stupidly incongruous.

Nan felt she almost hated them. Only a few hours before she had said good-bye to the man she loved. Not good-bye for a month or a year, but for the rest of life. Possibly, at some distant time, they might chance to meet at the house of a mutual friend, but they would meet merely as acquaintances, never again as lovers. Triumphing in spirit over the desire of the heart, they had taken their farewell of love—bowed to the destiny which had made of that love a forbidden thing.

But last night, even through the anguish of farewell, they had been unconsciously upheld by a feeling of exultation—that strange ecstasy of sacrifice which sometimes fires frail human beings to live up to the god that is within them.

To-day the inevitable reaction had succeeded and only the bleak, bitter facts remained. Nan faced them squarely, though it called for all the pluck of which she was possessed. Peter had gone, and throughout the years that stretched ahead she saw herself travelling through life step by step with Roger, living the same dull existence year in, year out, till at last, when they were both too old for anything to matter very much—too supine for romance to send the quick blood racing through their veins, too dull of sight to perceive the glamour and glory of the world—merciful death would step in and take one or other of them away.

She shivered a little with youth's instinctive dread of the time when age shall quieten the bounding pulses, slowly but surely taking the savour out of things. She wanted to live first, to gather up the joy of life with both hands. . . .

Her thoughts were suddenly scattered by the sound of the opening door and the sight of Mrs. Seymour's inquiring face peeping round it.

"Awake?" queried Kitty.

With a determined mental effort Nan pulled herself together, prepared to face the world as it was and not as she wanted it to be. She answered promptly:

"Yes. And hungry, please. May I have some breakfast?"

"Good child!" murmured Kitty approvingly. "As a matter of fact, your brekkie is coming hard on my heels"—gesturing, as she spoke, towards the trim maid who had followed her into the room, carrying an attractive-looking breakfast tray. When she had taken her departure, Kitty sat down and gossiped, while Nan did her best to appear as hungry as she had rashly implied she was.

Somehow she must manage to throw dust in Kitty's keen eyes—and a simulated appetite made quite an excellent beginning. She was determined that no one should ever know that she was anything other than happy in her engagement to Roger. She owed him that much, at least. So when Kitty, making an effort to speak quite naturally, mentioned that Peter had been obliged to return to town unexpectedly, she accepted the news with an assumption of naturalness as good as Kitty's own. Half an hour later, leaving Nan to dress, Kitty departed with any suspicions she might have had entirely lulled.

But her heart ached for the man whose haggard, stern-set face, when he had told her last night that he must go, had conveyed all, and more, than his brief words of explanation.

"Must you really go, Peter?" she had asked him wistfully. "I thought—you told me once—that you didn't mean to break off your friendship? . . . Can't you even be friends with her?"

His reply came swiftly and with a definiteness there was no mistaking.

"No," he said. "I can't. It's true what you say—I did once think I might keep her friendship. I was wrong."

There was a pause. Then Kitty asked quickly:

"But you won't refuse to meet her? It isn't as bad as that, Peter?"

He looked down at her oddly.

"It's quite as bad as that."

She felt herself trembling a little at the queer intensity of his tone. It was as though the man beside her were keeping in check, by sheer force of will, some big emotion that threatened to overwhelm him. She hesitated, then spoke very quietly and simply:

"That was a perfectly selfish question on my part, Peter. Don't take any notice of it."

"How—selfish?" he asked, with a faint smile.

"Because, if you refuse to meet Nan, I shall always have to see you separately—never together. I love you both and I can't give up either of you, so it will be rather like cutting myself in half."

Mallory took her hand in both his.

"You shall not have to cut yourself in half for me, dear friend," he said, with that touch of foreignness in his manner which revealed itself at times—not infrequently when he was concealing some strong feeling. "We shall meet again—some day—Nan and I. But not now—not at present."

"She'll miss you, Peter. . . . You're such a good pal!" Kitty gripped his hands hard and her voice was a trifle unsteady. After Barry, there was no one in the whole world she loved as much as she loved Peter. And she was powerless to help him.

"You'll be back in town soon," he answered her. "I shall come and see you sometimes. After all"—smiling a little—"Nan isn't constantly with you. She has her music." He paused a moment, then added gravely, with a quiet note of thankfulness in his voice: "As I, also, shall have my work."

There remained always that—work, the great palliative, a narcotic dulling the pain which, without it, would be almost beyond human endurance.

* * * * * *

"Everything's just about as bad as it could be!"

Kitty's voice was troubled and the eyes that sought Lord St. John's lacked all their customary vivacity. The tall old man, pacing the quadrangle beside her in the warmth of the afternoon sunshine, made no comment for a moment. Then he said slowly:

"Yes, it's pretty bad. I'm sorry Mallory had to leave this morning."

"Oh, well," murmured Kitty vaguely, "a well-known writer like that often has to dash off to town in the middle of a holiday. Things crop up, you know"—still more vaguely.

St. John paused in the middle of his pacing and, putting his hand under Kitty's chin, tilted her face upward, scrutinising it with a kindly, quizzical gaze.

"Lookers-on see most of the game, my dear," he observed, "I've no doubts about the 'business' which called Mallory away."

"You've guessed, then?"

"I was there when we first thought Nan might be in danger last night—and I saw his face. Then I was sure. I'd only suspected before."

"I knew," said Kitty simply. "He told me in London. At first he didn't intend coming down to Mallow at all."

"Better, perhaps, if he'd kept to his intention," muttered St. John abstractedly. He was thinking deeply, his fine brows drawn together.

"You see, he—some of us thought Maryon had come back meaning to fix up things with Nan. So Peter kept out of the way. He thinks only of her—her happiness."

"His own is out of the question, poor devil!"

Kitty nodded.

"And the worst of it is," she went on, "I can't feel quite sure that Nan will be really happy with Roger. They're the last two people in the world to get on well together."

Lord St. John looked out across the sea, his shoulders a little stooped, his hands clasped behind his back. No one regretted Nan's precipitate engagement more than he, but he recognised that little good could be accomplished by interference. Moreover, to his scrupulous, old-world sense of honour, a promise, once given, was not to be broken at will.

"I'm afraid, my dear," he said at last, turning back to Kitty, "I'm afraid we've reached a cul-de-sac."

His tones were despondent, and Kitty's spirits sank a degree lower. She looked at him bleakly, and he returned her glance with one equally bleak. Then, into this dejected council of two—cheerful, decided, and aboundingly energetic swept Aunt Eliza.

"Good afternoon, my dear," she said, making a peck at Kitty's cheek. "That flunkey, idling his life away on the hall mat, said I should find you here, so I saved him from overwork by showing myself in. How are you, St. John? You're looking a bit peaky this afternoon, aren't you?"

"It's old age beginning to tell," laughed Lord St. John, shaking hands.

"Old age?—Fiddlesticks!" Eliza fumed contemptuously. "I suppose the truth is you're fashin' yourself because Nan's engaged to be married. I've always said you were just like an old hen with one chick."

"I'd like to see the child with a nest of her own, all the same, Eliza."

"Hark to the man! And when 'tis settled she shall have the nest, he looks for all the world as though she had just fallen out of it!"

St. John wheeled round suddenly.

"That's exactly what I'm afraid of—that some day she may . . . fall out of this particular nest that's building."

"And why should she do that?" demanded Eliza truculently. "Roger's as bonnie and brave a mate as any woman need look for, and Trenby Hall's a fine home to bring his bride to."

"Yes. But don't you see," explained Kitty, "it's all happened so suddenly. A little while ago we thought Nan cared for someone else and now we don't want her to rush off and tie herself up with anyone in a hurry—and be miserable ever after."

"I'm no' in favour of long engagements."

"In this case a little delay might have been wiser before any engagement was entered upon," said Lord St. John.

"I don't hold with delays—nor interfering between folks that have promised to be man and wife. The Almighty never intended us to play at being providence. If it's ordained for Nan to marry Roger Trenby—marry him she will. And the lass is old enough to know her own mind; maybe you're wrong in thinking her heart's elsewhere."

Then, catching an expression of dissent on Kitty's face, she added shrewdly:

"Oh, I ken weel he's nae musician—but it's no' a few notes of the piano will be binding husband and wife together. 'Tis the wee bairns build the bridges we can cross in safety."

There was an unwontedly tender gleam in her hard-featured face. Kitty jumped up and kissed her impulsively.

"Aunt Eliza dear, you've a much softer heart than you pretend, and if Nan weren't happily married you'd be just as sorry as the rest of us."

"Perhaps Eliza's right," hazarded St. John rather uncertainly. "We may have been too ready to assume Nan won't be happy with the man she's chosen."

"I know Nan," persisted Kitty obstinately. "And I know she and Roger have really nothing in common."

"Then perhaps they'll find something after they're married," retorted Eliza, "and the looking for it will give a spice to life. There's many a man—ay, and woman, too!—who have fallen deeper in love after they've taken the plunge than ever they did while they were hovering on the brink."

"That may be true in some cases," responded St. John. "But you're advocating a big risk, Eliza."

"And there's mighty few things worth having in this world that aren't obtained at a risk," averred Mrs. McBain stoutly. "You've always been for wrapping Nan up in cotton wool, St. John—shielding her from this, protecting her from that! Sic' havers! She'd be more of a woman if you'd let her stand on her own feet a bit."

Lord St. John sighed.

"Well, she'll have to stand on her own feet henceforth," he said.

"What about the money?" demanded Eliza. "Are you still going to allow her the same income?"

"I think not," he answered thoughtfully. "That was to give her freedom of choice—freedom from matrimony if she wished. Well, she's chosen. And I believe Nan will be all the better for being dependent on her husband for—everything. At any rate, just at first."

Kitty looked somewhat dubious, but Mrs. McBain nodded her approval vigorously.

"That's sound common-sense," she said decidedly. "More than I expected of ye, St. John."

He smiled a little. Then, seeing the unspoken question in Kitty's eyes, he turned to her reassuringly.

"No need to worry, Madame Kitty. Remember, I'm always there, if need be, with the money-bags. My idea is that if Nan doesn't like entire dependence on her husband, it may spur her into working at her music. I'm always waiting for her to do something big. And the desire for independence is a different spur—and a better one—-than the necessity of boiling the pot for dinner."

"You seem to have forgotten that being a professional musician is next door to a crime in Lady Gertrude's eyes," observed Kitty. "She doesn't care for anyone to do more than 'play a little' in a nice, amateur, lady-like fashion!"

"Then Lady Gertrude will have to learn better," replied St. John sharply. Adding, with a grim smile: "One of my wedding-presents to Nan will be a full-sized grand piano."

So, in accordance with Eliza's advice, everyone refrained from "playing providence" and Nan's engagement to Roger Trenby progressed along conventional lines. Letters of congratulation poured in upon them both, and Kitty grew unmistakably bored by the number of her friends in the neighbourhood who, impelled by curiosity concerning the future mistress of Trenby Hall, suddenly discovered that they owed a call at Mallow and that the present moment was an opportune time to pay it.

Nan herself was keyed up to a rather high pitch these days, and it was difficult for those who were watching her with the anxious eyes of friendship to gauge the extent of her happiness or otherwise. From the moment of Mallory's departure she had flung herself with zest into each day's amusement behaving precisely as though she hadn't a care in life—playing about with Sandy, and flirting so exasperatingly with Roger that, although she wore his ring, within himself he never felt quite sure of her.

Kitty used every endeavour to get the girl to herself for half an hour, hoping she might be able to extract the truth from her. But Nan had developed an extraordinary elusiveness and she skilfully avoided tete-a-tete talks with anyone other than Roger. Moreover, there was that in her manner which utterly forbade even the delicate probing of a friend. The Nan who was wont to be so frank and ingenuous—surprisingly so at times—seemed all at once to have retired behind an impenetrable wall of reticence.

Meanwhile Fenton and Penelope had mutually decided to admit none but a few intimate friends into the secret of their engagement. As Ralph sagely observed: "We shall be married so soon that it isn't worth while facing a barrage of congratulations over such a short engagement."

They were radiantly happy, with the kind of happiness that keeps bubbling up from sheer joy of itself—in love with each other in such a delightfully frank and barefaced manner that everyone at Mallow regarded them with gentle amusement and loved them for being lovers.

Nothing pleased Nan better than to persuade them into singing that quaintly charming old song, The Keys of Heaven—the words of which hold such a tender, whimsical understanding of the feminine heart. Perhaps the refusal of the coach and four black horses "as black as pitch," and of all the other good things wherewith the lover in the song seeks to embellish his suit, was not rendered with quite as much emphasis as it should have been. One might almost have suspected the lady of a desire not to be too discouraging in her denials. But the final verse lacked nothing in interpretation.

Passionate and beseeching, as the lover makes his last appeal, offering the greatest gift of all, Ralph's glorious baritone entreated her:

"Oh, I will give you the keys of my heart, And we'll be married till death us do part, Madam, will you walk? Madam, will you talk? Madam, will you walk and talk with me?"

Then Penelope's eyes would glow with a lovely inner light, as though the beautiful possibilities of that journey through life together were envisioned in them, and her voice would deepen and mellow till it seemed to hold all the laughter and tears, and all the kindness and tender gaiety and exquisite solicitude of love.

Sometimes, as she was playing the accompaniment, Nan's own eyes would fill unexpectedly with tears and the black and white notes of the piano run together into an oblong blur of grey.

For though Peter had given her the keys of his heart that night of moon and sea at Tintagel, she might never use them to unlock the door of heaven.



CHAPTER XVIII

"TILL DEATH US DO PART"

Within a fortnight of Mallory's departure from St. Wennys, the whole of the house-party at Mallow had scattered. Lord St. John was the first to go—leaving in order to pay a short visit to Eliza McBain before returning to town. Often though she might scarify him with her sharp tongue, she was genuinely attached to him, and her clannishly hospitable soul would have been sorely wounded if he had not spent a few days at Trevarthen Wood while he was in the neighbourhood. Ralph Fenton had been obliged to hurry north to fulfil an unexpected concert engagement; and on the same day Barry left home to join a shooting-party in Scotland. A few days later Nan and Penelope returned to London, accompanied by Kitty, who asserted an unshakable determination to take part in the orgy of spending which Penelope's forthcoming wedding would entail.

Meanwhile Ralph, being "a big fish" as Penny had once commented, had secured his future wife's engagement as a member of the concert party—by the simple method of declining to accept the American tour himself unless she were included, so that to the joy of buying a trousseau was added the superlative delight of choosing special frocks for Penelope's appearances on tour in the States. Lord St. John had insisted upon presenting the trousseau, Barry Seymour made himself responsible for the concert gowns, and Kitty announced that the wedding was to take place from her house in Green Street.

For the first time in the whole of her brave, hard-working life, Penelope knew what it was to spend as she had seen other women spend, without being driven into choosing the second-best material or the less becoming frock for the unsatisfying reason that it was the cheaper. The two men had given Kitty carte blanche as regards expenditure and she proceeded to take full advantage of the fact, promptly quelling any tentative suggestions towards economy which Penelope, rather overwhelmed by Mrs. Seymour's lavish notions, occasionally put forth.

The date on which the concert party sailed was already fixed; leaving a bare month in which to accomplish the necessary preparations, and the time seemed positively to fly. Nan evaded taking part in the shopping expeditions which filled the days for Penelope and Kitty, since each new purchase, each frail, chiffony frock or beribboned box which arrived from dressmaker or milliner, served only to remind her that the approaching parting with Penelope was drawing nearer.

In women's friendships there must always come a big wrench when one or other of two friends meets the man who is her mate. The old, tried friendship retreats suddenly into second place—sometimes for a little while it almost seems as though it had petered out altogether. But when once the plunge has been taken, and the strangeness and wonder and glory of the new life have become ordinary and commonplace with the sweet commonness of dear, familiar, daily things, then the old friendship comes stealing back—deeper and more understanding, perhaps, than in the days before one of the two friends had come into her woman's kingdom.

Nan sat staring into the fire—for the first breath of autumn had already chilled the air—trying to realise that to-day was actually the eve of Penelope's wedding-day. It seemed incredible—even more incredible that Kitty and she should have gone off laughing together to see about some detail of the next day's arrangements which had been overlooked.

She was suddenly conscious that if this were the eve of her own marriage with Roger laughter would be far enough away from her. Regarded dispassionately, her decision to marry him because she couldn't marry the man she loved, seemed rather absurd and illogical. It was like going into a library and, having discovered that the book which you required was out, accepting one you didn't really want instead—just because the librarian, who knew nothing whatever about your tastes in literature, had offered it to you. You always began the substitute hopefully and generally ended up by being thoroughly bored with it and marvelling how on earth anybody could possibly have found it interesting! Nan wondered if she would get bored with her substituted volume.

She had rushed recklessly into her engagement, regarding marriage with Roger much as though it were a stout set of palings with "No Right of Way" written across them in large letters. Outside, the waves of emotion might surge in vain, while within, she and Roger would settle down to the humdrum placidity of married life. But the dull, ceaseless ache at her heart made her sometimes question whether anything in the world could keep at bay the insistent claim of love.

She tried to reassure herself. At least there would always remain her music and the passionate delight of creative work. It was true she had written nothing recently. She had been living at too high an emotional strain to have any surplus energy for originating, and she knew from experience that all creative work demands both strength and spirit, heart and soul—everything that is in you, if it is to be worth while.

These and other disconnected thoughts flitted fugitively through her mind as she sat waiting for Penelope's return. Vague visions of the future; memories—hastily slurred over; odd, rather frightened musings on the morrow's ceremony, when Penny would bind herself to Ralph ". . . in the sight of God, and in the face of this congregation."

Rather curiously Nan reflected that she had never actually read the Marriage Service—only caught chance phrases here and there in the course of other people's marriages. She switched on the light and hunted about for a book of Common Prayer, turning the pages with quick, nervous fingers till she came to the one headed: The Solemnization of Matrimony. She began to read.

"I require and charge you both, as ye will answer at the dreadful day of judgment when the secrets of all hearts shall be disclosed . . ."

How tremendously solemn and searching it sounded! She never remembered being struck with the awfulness of matrimony when she had so light-heartedly attended the weddings of her girl friends. Her principal recollection was of small, white-surpliced choir-boys shrilly singing "The Voice that breathed o'er Eden," and then, for a brief space, of a confused murmur of responsive voices, the clergyman and the bride and bridegroom dividing the honours fairly evenly between them, while the congregation rustled their wedding garments as they craned forward in their efforts to obtain a good view of the bride.

Followed the withdrawal into the vestry for the signing of the register, when everybody seemed to be kissing everybody else with considerable lack of discrimination. Finally, to the inspiriting strains of Mendelssohn—who evidently saw nothing sad or sorrowful in a wedding, but only joy and triumph and the completing of life—the whole company, bride and bridegroom, relatives and guests, trooped down the aisle and dwindled away in cars and carriages, to meet once more, like an incoming tide, at the house of the bride's parents.

But this! . . . This solemn "I charge ye both . . ."—Nan read on—"If either of you know any impediment why ye may not be lawfully joined together in matrimony, ye do now confess it."

There would certainly be an impediment in her own case, since the bride was in love with someone other than the bridegroom. Only, in the strange world we live in, that is not regarded in the light of a "lawful" impediment, so she wouldn't need to confess it—at least, not to anyone except Roger, and her sense of fair play had already impelled her to do that.

Her eyes flew along the words of the service, skimming hastily over the tender beauty of the vows the man and woman give each other. For they are only beautiful if love informs them. To Nan they were rather terrifying with their suggestion of irrevocability.

"So long as ye both shall live . . ."

Why, she and Roger were young enough to anticipate thirty or forty years together! Thirty or forty years—before death came and released them from each other.

"Then shall the priest join their right hands together and say, Those whom God hath joined together, let no man put asunder."

Nan stretched out a slender right hand and regarded it curiously. Some time to-morrow—at about half-past twelve, she supposed—the priest would join the hands of Penelope and Ralph and henceforth there would be no sundering "till death did them part."

Driven by circumstances, she had not stopped to consider the possible duration of marriage when she pledged her word to Roger, and during the time which had elapsed since she left Mallow the vision of the Roger who had sometimes jarred upon her, irritating her by his narrowed outlook and his lack of perception, had inevitably faded considerably, as the memory of temperamental irritations is apt to do as soon as absence has secured relief from them.

Latterly, Nan had been feeling quite affectionately disposed towards him—he was really rather a dear in some ways! And she had accepted an invitation to spend part of the winter at Trenby Hall.

The Seymours had planned to go abroad for several months and, since Penelope would be married and on tour, it had seemed a very natural solution of matters. So that when Lady Gertrude's rather stiffly-worded letter of invitation had arrived, Nan accepted it, determining in her own mind that, during the visit, she would try to overcome her mother-in-law's dislike to her. The knowledge of how much Roger loved her and of how little she was really able to give him in return, made her feel that it was only playing the game to please him in any way she could. And she recognised that to a man of Roger's ideas, the fact that his wife and mother were on good terms with one another would be a source of very definite satisfaction.

But now, as she re-read the solemn phrase: So long as ye both shall live, she was seized with panic. To be married for ten, twenty, forty years, perhaps, with never the hand of happy chance—the wonderful, enthralling "might be" of life—to help her to endure it! With a little stifled cry she sprang up and began pacing the room restlessly—up and down, up and down, her slim hands clenching and unclenching as she walked.

Presently—she could, not have told whether it was five minutes or five hours later—she heard the click of a latch-key in the lock. At the sound, the imperative need for self-control rushed over her. Penelope, of all people, must never know—never guess that she wasn't happy in her engagement to Roger. She didn't intend to spoil Penny's own happiness by the faintest cloud of worry on her account.

She snatched up the prayer-book she had let fall and switching off the lights, dropped down on the hearthrug just as Penelope came in, fresh and glowing, from her walk.

"All in the dark?" she queried as she entered. "You look like a kitten curled up by the fire." She stooped and kissed Nan with unwonted tenderness. Then she turned up the lights and drew the curtains across the window, shutting out the grey October twilight.

"Penny," said Nan, fingering the prayer-book, "have you ever read the marriage service?"

Penelope's face lightened with a sudden radiance.

"Yes, isn't it beautiful?"

Nan stared at her.

"Beautiful?" She gave an odd little laugh. "It sounds to me much more like a commination service. Doesn't it frighten you?"

"Not a bit." Penelope's serenely happy eyes confirmed her quick denial.

"Well"—Nan regarded her contemplatively—"it rubs in all the dreadful things that may happen to you—like ill-health, and poverty, and 'for worse'—whatever that may mean—and dins into your ears the fact that nothing but death can release you."

"You're looking at the wrong side of it, Nan. It seems to me to show just exactly how much a husband and wife may be to each other, and how—together—they can face all the ills that flesh is heir to."

"Reminds one of a visit to the dentist—you can screw your courage up more easily if someone goes with you," remarked Nan grimly.

"You're simply determined to look on the ugly side of things," protested Penelope.

"And yet, Penny dear, at one time you used to scold me for being too idealistic in my notions!"

But Penelope declined to shift from her present standpoint.

"And now you're expecting so little that, when your turn comes, you'll be beautifully disappointed," she remarked as she left the room in order to finish some odds and ends of packing.

* * * * * *

In her capacity of sole bridesmaid Nan followed Penelope's tall, white-clad figure up the aisle. Each step they made was taking her friend further away from her—nearer to the man whom the next half-hour would make her husband. With a swift leap of the imagination, she visioned herself in Penelope's place, leaning on Lord St. John's arm—and the man who waited for her at the chancel steps was Roger! She swayed a moment, then by an immense effort forced herself back to the reality of things, following steadily once more in the wake of her uncle and Penelope.

There seemed to her something dream-like in their slow progression. The atmosphere was heavy with the scent of flowers, a sea of blurred faces loomed up at her from the pews on either side, and the young, sweet voices of the choristers soared high above the organ. She stole a glance at her uncle. He looked frailer than usual, she thought, with a sudden pang of apprehension; perhaps the heat of the summer had told upon him a little. Then her gaze ran on to where the bridegroom stood, the tall altar-lights flickering behind him, his face turned towards the body of the church, and his eyes, very bright and steady, resting on Penelope as she approached.

He stepped forward quickly as she neared the chancel and Nan saw that a smile passed between them as he took his place beside her. A feeling of reassurance crept over her, quieting the sense of almost breathless panic which had for a moment overwhelmed her when she had pictured herself in Penny's place. There was dear old Ralph, looking quite ordinary and matter-of-fact, only rather sprucer than usual in his brand-new wedding garments. The feeling of reassurance deepened. Marriage wasn't so appalling. Good heavens! Dozens of people were married every day and she was quite sure they were not all wildly in love with each other.

Then the service commenced and the soft rise and fall of responsive voices murmured through the church a little space. . . .

It was over very quickly—Nan almost gasped to find how astonishingly short a time it takes to settle one of the biggest things in life. In a few minutes the scented dimness of the church was exchanged for the pale gold of the autumn sunlight, the hush of prayer for the throb of waiting cars.

Later still, when the afternoon was spent, came the last handshakings and kisses. A rising chorus of good wishes, a dust of confetti, the closing of a door, and then the purr of a car as Penelope and Ralph, were borne away on the first stage of that new, untried life into which they were adventuring together.

Nan's face wore a queer look of strain as she turned back into the house. Once more the shadow of the future had fallen across her—the shadow of her marriage with Roger Trenby.

"My dear"—she looked up to meet Lord St. John's kindly gaze. "My dear, come into the dining-room. A glass of champagne is what you want. You're overdone."

He poured it out and mechanically Nan lifted it to her lips, then set it down on the table, untasted, with a hand that shook.

"I don't want it," she said. Then, unevenly: "Uncle, I can't—I can't ever marry—"

"Drink this," insisted St. John. He held out the champagne once more, quietly ignoring her stumbling utterance.

Nan pushed the glass aside. The whole of her misery was on the tip of her tongue.

"Listen Uncle David—you must listen!" she began rather wildly. "I don't care for Ro—"

"No, my dear. Tell me nothing." He checked the impending confession hastily. He guessed that it had some hearing upon her marriage with Trenby. If so, it would be better left unsaid. Just now she was tired and unstrung; later, she might regret her impulsive confidence. He wanted to save her from that.

"Don't tell me anything. What's done is done." He paused, then added: "Don't forget, Nan, a Davenant's word is his bond—always."

She responded to the demand in his voice as a thoroughbred answers to the touch of the whip. The champagne glass trembled a little in her fingers, as she took it from him, and clicked against her teeth. She swallowed the wine and replaced the glass on the table.

"Thank you," she said quietly. But it wasn't the wine for which she thanked him. She knew, just as he had known, that she had been on the verge of utter break-down. Her nerves, on edge throughout the whole marriage ceremony she had just witnessed, had almost given way beneath the strain, undermining the courage with which she had hitherto faced the future.



CHAPTER XIX

THE PRICE

A sense of bustle and mild excitement pervaded Trenby Hall. The hounds were to meet some distance away, and on a hunting morning it invariably necessitated the services of at least two of the menservants and possibly those of an observant maid—who had noted where last he had left his tobacco pouch—to get Roger off successfully.

"My hunting boots, Jenkins!" he demanded as he issued from the library. "And look sharp with them! Flask and sandwich-case—that's right." He busied himself bestowing these two requisites in his pockets.

Nan, cool and unperturbed; joined him in the hall, a small, amused smile on her face. She had stayed at Trenby long enough by now to be well used to the cyclone which habitually accompanied Roger's departure to the meet, and the boyish unreasonableness of it—seeing that the well-trained servants invariably had everything in readiness for him—rather appealed to her. He was like a big, overgrown school-boy returning to school and greatly concerned as to whether his cricket-bat and tuck-box were safely included amongst his baggage.

"You, darling?" Roger nodded at her perfunctorily, preoccupied with the necessities of the moment. "Now, have I got my pipe?"—slapping his pockets to ascertain. To miss his customary pipe as he trotted leisurely home after the day's hunting was unthinkable. "Matches! I've no matches! Here, Morton"—to the butler who was standing by with Roger's hunting-crop in his hand. "Got any matches?"

Morton produced a box at once. He had been in Roger's service from boyhood, fought side by side with him in Flanders, and no demand of his master's had yet found him unprepared. Nan was wont to declare that had Roger requested the Crown jewels, Morton would have immediately produced them from his pocket.

Outside, a groom was patiently walking a couple of horses up and down. Quivering, velvety nostrils snuffed the keen air while gleaming black hoofs danced gently on the gravel drive, executing little side steps of excitement—for no hunting day comes round but that in some mysterious way the unerring instinct of the four-legged hunter acquaints him of the fact. Further along clustered the pack, the hounds padding restlessly here and there, but kept within bounds by the occasional crack of a long-lashed crop or a gruff command from one of the whips.

Nan was always conscious of a curious intermingling of feeling when, as now, she watched Roger ride away at the head of his hounds. The day she had almost lost her life at the kennels recurred to her mind inevitably—those moments of swift and terrible danger when it seemed as though nothing could save her. And with that memory came another—the memory of Roger flinging himself forward to the rescue, forcing back with bare hands the great hound which had attacked her. A quick thrill—the thrill of primitive woman—ran through her at the recollection. No woman can remain unmoved by physical courage—more especially if it is her own imperative need which has called it forth.

That was the side of Roger which she liked best to dwell upon. But she was rapidly learning that he had other less heroically attractive sides. No man who has been consistently spoiled and made much of by a couple of women is likely to escape developing a certain amount of selfishness, and Nan had already discovered that Roger was somewhat inclined to play the autocrat. As he grew accustomed to her presence in the house he settled down more or less tranquilly into the normal ways of existence, and sometimes, when things went awry, he would lose his temper pretty badly, as is the natural way of man.

Unfortunately, Nan's honest endeavours to get on better terms with her future mother-in-law met with no success. Lady Gertrude had presented an imperturbably polite and hostile front almost from the moment of the girl's arrival at the Hall. Even at dinner the first evening, she had cast a disapproving eye upon Nan's frock—a diaphanous little garment in black: with veiled gleams of hyacinth and gold beneath the surface and apparently sustained about its wearer by a thread of the same glistening hyacinth and gold across each slender shoulder.

With the quickness of a squirrel Isobel Carson, demurely garbed as befitted a poor relative, noted the disapprobation conveyed by Lady Gertrude's sweeping glance.

"I suppose that's what they're wearing now in town?" she asked conversationally of Nan across the table.

Roger looked up and seeing the young, privet-white throat and shoulders which gleamed above the black, smiled contentedly.

"It's jolly pretty, isn't it?" he rejoined, innocently unaware that any intention lurked behind his cousin's query.

"It might be—if there were more of it," said Lady Gertrude icily. She had not failed to notice earlier that Nan was wearing the abbreviated skirt of the moment—though in no way an exaggerated form of it—revealing delectable shoes and cobwebby stockings which seemed to cry out a gay defiance to the plain and serviceable footgear which she herself affected.

"It does look just a tiny bit daring—in the country," murmured Isobel deprecatingly. "You see, we're used to such quiet fashions here."

"I don't think anything can be much quieter than black," replied Nan evenly.

There for the moment the matter rested, but the next day Roger had asked her, rather diffidently, if she couldn't find something plainer to wear in an evening.

"I thought you liked the dress," she countered.

"Well—yes. But—"

"But your mother has been talking t0 you about it? Is that it?"

Roger nodded.

"Even Isobel thought it a little outre for country wear," he said eagerly, making matters worse instead of better, in the blundering way a man generally contrives to do when he tries to settle a feminine difference of opinion.

Nan's foot tapped the floor impatiently and a spark of anger lit itself in her eyes.

"I don't think my choice of clothes has anything to do with Miss Carson," she answered sharply.

"No, sweetheart, of course it hasn't, really. But I know you'd like to please my mother—and she's not used to these new styles, you see."

He stumbled on awkwardly, then drew her into his arms and kissed her.

"To please me—wear something else," he said. Although unformulated even to himself, Roger's creed was of the old school. He quite honestly believed that a woman's chief object in life was to please her male belongings, and it seemed to him a perfectly good arrangement.

Not to please him, but because she was genuinely anxious to win Lady Gertrude's liking, Nan yielded. Perhaps if she conceded this particular point it would pave the way towards a better understanding.

"Very well," she said, smiling. "That especial frock shan't appear again while I'm down here. But it's a duck of a frock, really, Roger!"—with a feminine sigh of regret.

She was to find, however, as time went on, that there were very many other points over which she would have to accept Lady Gertrude's rulings. Punctuality at meals was regarded at Trenby Hall as one of the laws of the Medes and Persians, and Nan, accustomed to the liberty generally accorded a musician in such matters, failed on more than one occasion to appear at lunch with the promptness expected of her.

In the West Parlour—-a sitting-room which Lady Gertrude herself never used—there was a fairly good piano, and here Nan frequently found refuge, playing her heart out in the welcome solitude the room afforded. Inevitably she would forget the time, remaining entirely oblivious of such mundane things as meals. Then she would be sharply recalled to the fact that she had committed an unforgivable sin by receiving a stately message from Lady Gertrude to the effect that they were waiting lunch for her.

On such occasions Nan sometimes felt that it was almost a physical impossibility to enter that formal dining-room and face the glacial disapproval manifest on Lady Gertrude's face, the quick glance of condolence which Isobel would throw her—and which always somehow filled her with distrust—and the irritability which Roger was scarcely able to conceal.

Roger's annoyance was generally due to the veiled criticism which his mother and cousin contrived to exude prior to her appearance. Nothing definite—an intonation here, a double-edged phrase there—but enough to show him that his future wife fell far short of the standard Lady Gertrude had in mind for her. It nettled him, and accordingly he felt irritated with Nan for giving his mother a fresh opportunity for disapprobation.

They were all unimportant things—these small jars and clashes of habit and opinion. But to Nan, who had been used to such absolute freedom, they were like so many links of a chain which held and chafed her. She fretted under them as a caged bird frets. Gradually, too, she was awakening to the limitations of the life which would be hers when she married Roger, realising that, much as he loved her, he was quite unable to supply her with either the kind of companionship or the mental stimulus her temperament craved and which the little coterie of clever, brilliant people who had been her intimates in town had given her in full measure. The Trenbys' circle of friends interested her not at all. The men mostly of the sturdy, sporting type, bored her ineffably, and she found the women, with their perpetual local gossip and discussion of domestic difficulties, dull and uninspiring. Of the McBains, unfortunately, she saw very little, owing to the distance, between the Hall and Trevarthen Wood.

It was, therefore, with a cry of delight that she welcomed Sandy, who arrived in his two-seater shortly after Roger had ridden off to the meet. Lady Gertrude and Isobel had already gone out together, bent upon some parochial errand in the village, so that Nan was alone with her thoughts. And they were not particularly pleasant ones.

"Sandy!" She greeted him with outstretched hands. "You angel boy! I wasn't even hoping to see you for another few weeks or so."

"Just this minute arrived—thought it about time I looked you up again," returned Sandy cheerfully. "I met Trenby about a mile away and scattered his horses and hounds to the four winds of heaven with my stink-pot."

"Yes," agreed Nan reminiscently. "Why does your car smell so atrociously, Sandy?"

"It's only in slow movements—never in a presto. That's why I'm always getting held up for exceeding the speed limit. I'm bound to let her rip—out of consideration to the passersby."

"Well, I'm awfully glad you felt moved to come over here this morning. I'm—I'm rather fractious to-day, I think. Do you suppose Lady Gertrude will ask you to stay to lunch?"

"I hope so. But as it's only about ten-thirty a.m., lunch is merely a futurist dream at present."

"I know. I wonder why there are such enormous intervals between meals in the country?" said Nan speculatively. "In town there's never any time to get things in and meals are a perfect nuisance. Here they seem to be the only breaks in the day."

"That," replied Sandy sententiously, "is because you're leading an idle existence. You're not doing anything—so of course there's no time to do it in."

"Not doing anything? Well, what is there to do?" She flung out her hands with an odd little gesture of hopelessness. "Besides, I am doing something—I learned how to make puddings yesterday, and to-morrow I'm to be initiated into soup jellies—you know, the kind of stuff you trot around to old women in the village at Christmas time."

"Can't the cook make them?"

"Of course she can. But Lady Gertrude is appalled at my lack of domestic knowledge—so soup jellies it has to be."

Sandy regarded her thoughtfully. She seemed spiritless, and the charming face held a gravity that was quite foreign to it. In the searching winter sunlight he could even discern one or two faint lines about the violet-blue eyes, while the curving mouth, with its provocative short upper lip, drooped rather wearily at its corners.

"You're bored stiff," he told her firmly. "Why don't you run up to town for a few days and see your pals there?"

Nan shrugged her shoulders.

"For the excellent reason that half of them are away, or—or married or something."

Only a few days previously she had seen the announcement of Maryon Rooke's marriage in the papers, and although the fact that he was married had now no power to wound her, it was like the snapping of yet another link with that happy, irresponsible, Bohemian life which she and Penelope had shared together.

"Sandy"—she spoke impetuously. "After I'm—married, I don't think I shall ever go to London again. It would be like peeping into heaven. Then the door would slam and I'd come back—here! I'm out of it now—out of everything. The others will all go on singing and playing and making books and pictures—right in the heart of it all. While I shall be stuck away here . . . by myself . . . making soup jellies!"

She sprang up and walked restlessly to the window, staring out at the undulating meadowland.

"I'm sick of the sight of those fields!" she exclaimed almost violently. "The same deadly dull green fields day after day. If—if one of them would only turn pink for a change it would be a relief!" Her breath caught in a strangled sob.

Sandy followed her to the window.

"Look here, Nan, you can't go on like this." There was an unaccustomed decision in his tones; the boyish inflection had gone. It was a man who was speaking, and determinedly, too. "You've no business to be everlastingly gazing at green fields. You ought to be turning 'em into music so that the people who've got only bricks and mortar to stare at can get a whiff of them."

Nan gazed at him in astonishment—at this new, surprising Sandy who was talking to her with the forcefulness of a man ten years his senior.

"As for being 'out of it,' as you say," he went on emphatically. "If you are, it's only by your own consent. Anyone who writes as you can need never be out of it. If you'd only do the big stuff you're capable of doing, you'd be 'in it' right enough—half the time confabbing with singers and conductors, and the other half glad to get back to your green fields and the blessed quiet. If you were like me, now—not a damn bit of good because I've no technical knowledge . . ."

In an instant her quick sympathies responded to the note of regret which he could not keep quite out of his voice.

"Sandy, I'm a beast to grouse. It's true—you've had much harder luck." She spoke eagerly, then paused, checked by a sudden piercing memory. "But—but music . . . after all, it isn't the only thing."

"No," he returned cheerfully. "But it will do quite well to go on with. Let's toddle along to the piano and amuse each other."

She nodded, and together they made their way to the West Parlour.

"Have you written anything new?" he asked, turning over some sheets of scribbled, manuscript that were lying on the piano. "Let's hear it."

Rather reluctantly she played him a few odd bits of her recent work—the outcome of dull, depressing days.

Sandy listened, and as he listened his lips set in an uncompromising straight line.

"Well, I never heard more maudlin piffle in my life!" was his frank comment when she had finished. "If you can't do better than that, you'd better shut the piano and go digging potatoes."

Nan laughed rather mirthlessly.

"I don't know what sort of a hand you'd make at potato digging," pursued Sandy. "But apparently this is the net result of your musical studies"—and, seating himself at the piano, he rattled off a caustic parody of her performance.

"Rank sentimentalism, Nan," he said coolly, as he dropped his hands from the keys. "And you know it as well as I do."

"Yes, I suppose it is. But it's impossible to do any serious work here. Lady Gertrude fairly radiates disapproval whenever I spend an hour or two at the piano. Oh!"—her sense of humour rising uppermost for a moment—"she asked me to play to them one evening, so I gave them some Debussy—out of sheer devilment, I think"—smiling a little—"and at the end Lady Gertrude said politely: 'Thank you. And now, might we have something with a little more tune in it?"