ts far too much to exploit either, I assure you. The Divorce
Courts are muddy--and the Thames is wet."

Kitty was silent a moment, her heart torn by the bitterness in the
girl's voice.

"You'd regret it, I know," she insisted gravely.

Nan rose from her cushions, swinging her hat in her hand.

"Always remembering that a prophet hath no honour in his own country,"
she commented curtly over her shoulder, and sauntered away towards the
house, defiantly humming the air of a scandalous little French song as
she went.

Kitty sank back into the hammock, lighting a cigarette to aid her
meditations. Truly matters had gone very crookedly. Maryon Rooke had
been the first cause of all the trouble. Then she herself had
intervened to distract Nan's thoughts by asking Peter to be a pal to
her. And the net result of it all was that Peter, irrevocably bound to
another woman, had fallen in love with Nan, while the latter was
philandering desperately with a totally unsuitable second string.

"Dreaming, Kitty?" said a voice, and looking up with the frown still
wrinkling her pretty brows, she saw Lord St. John approaching.

"If I am, it must be a nightmare, I think!" she answered lugubriously.

The old man's kindly face took on a look of concern.

"Any nightmare that I can dispel, my dear?"

Kitty patted the fine-bred, wrinkled old hand that rested on the edge
of the hammock.

"I know you love to play the fairy godfather to us all, but in this
case I'm afraid you can't help. In fact, you've done all you
could--made her free to choose."

"It's Nan, then?" he said quickly.

Kitty laughed rather mirthlessly.

"'M. Isn't it always Nan who is causing us anxiety one way or another?"

"And just now?"

"Haven't you guessed? I'm sure you have!"

St. John's lips twisted in a whimsical smile.

"I suppose you mean that six-foot-odd of bone and muscle from Trenby
Hall?"

"Of course I mean him! Just because she's miserable over that Rooke
business and because Roger is as insistent as a man with that kind of
chin always is, she'll be Mrs. Roger before we can stop her--and
miserable ever after!"

"Isn't the picture a trifle overdrawn?" St. John pulled forward one of
the garden chairs and sat down. "Trenby's a very decent fellow, I
should imagine, and comes of good old stock."

"Oh, yes, he's all that." Kitty metaphorically tossed the whole pack
of qualifications into the dustbin. "But he's got the devil's own
temper