ive you all the extras," she laughed as she sprang lightly to the
ground.

Jerry did not even dismount. His time also was limited.

"Yes?" he called over his shoulder, as he wheeled round and began to ride
away. "And?"

"And as many more as I can spare," cried Nan, and with a wave of her hand
turned to enter the house.

The laugh was still on her lips as she mounted the steps. The hall-door
stood open, and her father's voice hailed her from within.

"Hallo, Nan, you scapegrace! What mad-cap trick will you be up to next,
I wonder?"

There was a decided note of uneasiness behind the banter of his tone
which her quick ear instantly detected. She looked up sharply and in a
second, as if at a touch of magic, the laughter all died out of her face.

A man was standing in the glow of the lamp-light slightly behind her
father, a man of medium height and immense breadth, with a clean-shaven,
heavy-browed face, and sombre eyes that watched her silently.

CHAPTER VI

Nan was ever quick in all her ways, and it was very seldom that she was
disconcerted. Between the moment of her reaching the top step and that
in which she entered the hall, she flashed from laughing childhood to
haughty womanhood. The dignity with which she offered her hand to her
husband was in its way superb.

"An unexpected pleasure!" was her icy comment.

He took the hand, looking closely into her eyes. He made no attempt to
draw her nearer, and Nan remained at arm's-length. Yet something in his
scrutiny affected her, for a shiver went through her, proudly though she
met it.

"It is cold," she said, by way of explanation. "It is freezing hard, and
we came all the way by road."

"Yes," he said, in his deep, slow voice. "I saw you."

"You saw me?" Nan's eyebrows went up; she was furiously conscious that
she blushed.

"I passed you in a motor," he explained.

"Oh!" She withdrew her hand, and turned to the fire with a little laugh,
raging inwardly at the fate that had betrayed her.

Standing by the hearth, she pulled off her gloves, and spread her hands
to the blaze. It was a mere pretence, for she was hot all over by that
time, hot and quivering and fiercely resentful. There was another feeling
also behind her resentment, a feeling which she would not own, that made
her heart thump oddly, as it had thumped only once before in her
life--when this man had touched her face with his lips.

"Well," she said, standing up after a few minutes,