seriously. He was always seeking her out, always making excuses to
be alone with her. It was growing increasingly difficult to evade
him. She had never liked the man, but Fate or his own contrivance
was continually throwing him in her way. If she hunted, he
invariably rode home with her. If she remained away, he invariably
came upon her somehow, and wanted to know wherefore.

She strongly suspected that her step-mother was in league with him,
though she had no direct proof of this. Preston was being
constantly asked to the house, and whenever they went out to dine
they almost invariably met him. She had begun to have a feeling
that people eyed them covertly, with significant glances, that they
were thrown together by design. Wherever they met, he always fell
to her lot as dinner-partner, and he had begun to affect an
attitude of proprietorship towards her which was yet too indefinite
for her actively to resent,

She felt as if a net were closing around her from which, despite
her utmost effort, she was powerless to escape. Also, for weeks
now she had received no letter from Guy, and that fact disheartened
her more than any other. She had never before had to wait so long
for word from him. Very brief, often unsatisfying, as his letters
had been, at least they had never failed to arrive. And she
counted upon them so. Without them, she felt bereft of her
mainstay. Without them, the almost daily, nerve-shattering scenes
which her step-mother somehow managed to enact, however discreet
her attitude, became an infliction hardly to be borne. She might
have left her home for a visit among friends, but something held
her back from this. Something warned her that if she went her
place would be instantly filled up, and she would never return.