y, and his heart and
his pluck and a great deal of his money went to the preserving of it.

"Oh," cried Nan warmly, "why didn't you bring them round by Mallow
before you went back to the kennels?"

"We didn't come coastward at all," he replied. "I never thought of
your caring to see them."

Nan was not in the least a sportswoman by nature, though she had hunted
as a child--albeit much against her will--to satisfy the whim of a
father who had been a dare-devil rider across country and had found his
joy in life--and finally his death--in the hunting field he had loved.
But she was a lover of animals, like most people of artistic
temperament, and her reply was enthusiastic.

"Of course I'd like to have seen them!"

Roger's face brightened.

"Then will you let me show you the kennels one day? I could motor over
for you and bring you back afterwards."

Nan nodded up at him.

"I'd like to come very much. When shall we do it?"

Kitty stirred idly in her hammock.

"You've let yourself in for it now, Roger," she remarked. "Nan is the
most impatient person alive."

Once more Nan looked up, with lazy "blue violet" eyes whose seductive
sweetness sent an unaccustomed thrill down Roger's spine. She was so
different, this slender bit of womanhood with her dusky hair and petal
skin, from the sturdy, thick-booted, sporting type of girl to which he
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 th