ooked you up
again," returned Sandy cheerfully. "I met Trenby about a mile away and
scattered his horses and hounds to the four winds of heaven with my
stink-pot."

"Yes," agreed Nan reminiscently. "Why does your car smell so
atrociously, Sandy?"

"It's only in slow movements--never in a presto. That's why I'm always
getting held up for exceeding the speed limit. I'm bound to let her
rip--out of consideration to the passersby."

"Well, I'm awfully glad you felt moved to come over here this morning.
I'm--I'm rather fractious to-day, I think. Do you suppose Lady
Gertrude will ask you to stay to lunch?"

"I hope so. But as it's only about ten-thirty a.m., lunch is merely a
futurist dream at present."

"I know. I wonder why there are such enormous intervals between meals
in the country?" said Nan speculatively. "In town there's never any
time to get things in and meals are a perfect nuisance. Here they seem
to be the only breaks in the day."

"That," replied Sandy sententiously, "is because you're leading an idle
existence. You're not doing anything--so of course there's no time to
do it in."

"Not doing anything? Well, what is there to do?" She flung out her
hands with an odd little gesture of hopelessness. "Besides, I am doing
something--I learned how to make puddings yesterday, and to-morrow I'm
to be initiated into soup jellies--you know, the kind of stuff you trot
around to old women in the village at Christmas time."

"Can't the cook make them?"

"Of course she can. But Lady Gertrude is appalled at my lack of
domestic knowledge--so soup jellies it has to be."

Sandy regarded her thoughtfully. She seemed spiritless, and the
charming face held a gravity that was quite foreign to it. In the
searching winter sunlight he could even discern one or two faint lines
about the violet-blue eyes, while the curving mouth, with its
provocative short upper lip, drooped rather wearily at its corners.

"You're bored stiff," he told her firmly. "Why don't you run up to
town for a few days and see your pals there?"

Nan shrugged her shoulders.

"For the excellent reason that half of them are away, or--or married or
something."

Only a few days previously she had seen the announcement of Maryon
Rooke's marriage in the papers, and although the fact that he was
married had now no power to wound her, it was like the snapping of yet
another link with that happy, irresponsible, Bohemian life which she
and