er eyes flew along the words of the service, skimming hastily over the
tender beauty of the vows the man and woman give each other. For they
are only beautiful if love informs them. To Nan they were rather
terrifying with their suggestion of irrevocability.

"_So long as ye both shall live . . ._"

Why, she and Roger were young enough to anticipate thirty or forty
years together! Thirty or forty years--before death came and released
them from each other.

"_Then shall the priest join their right hands together and say, Those
whom God hath joined together, let no man put asunder._"

Nan stretched out a slender right hand and regarded it curiously. Some
time to-morrow--at about half-past twelve, she supposed--the priest
would join the hands of Penelope and Ralph and henceforth there would
be no sundering "till death did them part."

Driven by circumstances, she had not stopped to consider the possible
duration of marriage when she pledged her word to Roger, and during the
time which had elapsed since she left Mallow the vision of the Roger
who had sometimes jarred upon her, irritating her by his narrowed
outlook and his lack of perception, had inevitably faded considerably,
as the memory of temperamental irritations is apt to do as soon as
absence has secured relief from them.

Latterly, Nan had been feeling quite affectionately disposed towards
him--he was really rather a dear in some ways! And she had accepted an
invitation to spend part of the winter at Trenby Hall.

The Seymours had planned to go abroad for several months and, since
Penelope would be married and on tour, it had seemed a very natural
solution of matters. So that when Lady Gertrude's rather
stiffly-worded letter of invitation had arrived, Nan accepted it,
determining in her own mind that, during the visit, she would try to
overcome her mother-in-law's dislike to her. The knowledge of how much
Roger loved her and of how little she was really able to give him in
return, made her feel that it was only playing the game to please him
in any way she could. And she recognised that to a man of Roger's
ideas, the fact that his wife and mother were on good terms with one
another would be a source of very definite satisfaction.

But now, as she re-read the solemn phrase: _So long as ye both shall
live_, she was seized with panic. To be married for ten, twenty, forty
years, perhaps, with never the hand of happy chance--the wonderful,
enthralling "