u've been doing it mighty well. Maybe
Peterman'll feel sore, but he'll see it that way after--awhile."

CHAPTER XIII

DEEPENING WATERS

Nancy thought long and earnestly over her breakfast. She thought deeply
as she proceeded to her office. Even the business of again taking up the
thread of her work failed to absorb her.

Apprehension disturbed, and a certain sense of guilt weighed upon her.
The vision of the tall figure of Elas Peterman as it moved down the
dining-room at the Chateau remained with her. She had caught the glance
of his dark eyes. She knew he had recognised her; and there had been
neither smile nor recognition in the swift exchange that had passed
between them.

So she answered the usual morning summons of her chief without any
pleasant anticipation. She expected a bad time, and strove to prepare
herself for it.

But alarm vanished the moment she ushered herself into the man's
presence. He was not at his desk poring over his littered
correspondence. She found him standing before his favourite window,
gazing out reflectively upon the grey light of the early winter day. He
turned at the sound of her entry, and his smile of greeting lacked
nothing of its usual cordiality.

Had she observed him a moment before it must have been different. But
she had been spared all sight of the mood that had driven him to abandon
urgent correspondence in favour of the drab outlook beyond the window.
It was a bad expression. It was the expression of a man of fierce
cruelty. It was not an expression of open, hot anger, which flares up,
passes, and is forgotten like the fury of a summer storm. It was rather
the slowly banking clouds of winter, piling up for a climax that should
be devastating. And through it all he had smiled, smiled with angry eyes
that seemed to grow colder and harder every moment.

Nancy knew little of the world, and less of men and women. It could not
have been otherwise. Vital with a youthful optimism and strong purpose,
she had devoted herself to work to the exclusion of everything else. And
before that there had only been the scrupulous care of the good matrons
of Marypoint. A wider experience, a maturer mind would have yielded her
doubt as she beheld the man's smiling greeting now. She would have
reminded herself of her offence, and understood its enormity in the eyes
of a man. She would have had a better appreciation of her own
attractions, and would have long since understood this ma