I don't think anything can be much quieter than black," replied Nan
evenly.

There for the moment the matter rested, but the next day Roger had
asked her, rather diffidently, if she couldn't find something plainer
to wear in an evening.

"I thought you liked the dress," she countered.

"Well--yes. But--"

"But your mother has been talking t0 you about it? Is that it?"

Roger nodded.

"Even Isobel thought it a little outre for country wear," he said
eagerly, making matters worse instead of better, in the blundering way
a man generally contrives to do when he tries to settle a feminine
difference of opinion.

Nan's foot tapped the floor impatiently and a spark of anger lit itself
in her eyes.

"I don't think my choice of clothes has anything to do with Miss
Carson," she answered sharply.

"No, sweetheart, of course it hasn't, really. But I know you'd like to
please my mother--and she's not used to these new styles, you see."

He stumbled on awkwardly, then drew her into his arms and kissed her.

"To please me--wear something else," he said. Although unformulated
even to himself, Roger's creed was of the old school. He quite
honestly believed that a woman's chief object in life was to please her
male belongings, and it seemed to him a perfectly good arrangement.

Not to please him, but because she was genuinely anxious to win Lady
Gertrude's liking, Nan yielded. Perhaps if she conceded this
particular point it would pave the way towards a better understanding.

"Very well," she said, smiling. "That especial frock shan't appear
again while I'm down here. But it's a duck of a frock, really,
Roger!"--with a feminine sigh of regret.

She was to find, however, as time went on, that there were very many
other points over which she would have to accept Lady Gertrude's
rulings. Punctuality at meals was regarded at Trenby Hall as one of
the laws of the Medes and Persians, and Nan, accustomed to the liberty
generally accorded a musician in such matters, failed on more than one
occasion to appear at lunch with the promptness expected of her.

In the West Parlour---a sitting-room which Lady Gertrude herself never
used--there was a fairly good piano, and here Nan frequently found
refuge, playing her heart out in the welcome solitude the room
afforded. Inevitably she would forget the time, remaining entirely
oblivious of such mundane things as meals. Then she would be sharply
recalled to the fact that she h