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?"