a quick gesture of her small brown hands--"she _must_ have
been!"

"I don't know so much about the 'must have been,'" Roger had admitted
ruefully. "She cared--once--for someone else."

"Who was it?"

Isobel's question shot out as swiftly as the tongue of an adder.

"I can't tell you," he answered reluctantly. He wished to God he
could! That other unknown man of whom, from the very beginning, he had
been unconsciously afraid! He was actively, consciously jealous of him
now.

Then Isobel's subdued, shocked tones recalled him from his thoughts.

"Oh, Roger, Nan couldn't--she would never have run away to be--with
him?"

She had given words to the very fear which had been lurking at the back
of his mind from the moment he had read the briefly-worded note which
Nan had left for him.

Throughout the night this belief had grown and deepened within him, and
with the dawn he had motored across country to Exeter, driving like a
madman, heedless of speed limits. There he had dispatched a telegram
to Penelope, and having waited unavailingly for a reply he had come
straight on to town by rail. The mark of those long hours of sickening
apprehension was heavily imprinted on the white, set face he turned to
Nan when she informed him that it was she who had stopped Penelope from
sending any answer.

"And I suppose," he said slowly, "it merely struck you as . . .
amusing . . . to let me think what I thought?"

"You had no right to think such a thing," she retorted. "I may be
anything bad that your mother believes me, but at least I play fair! I
left Trenby to stay with Penelope, exactly as I told you in my note.
If--if I proposed to break my promise to you, I wouldn't do it on the
sly--meanly, like that." Her eyes looked steadily into his. "I'd tell
you first."

He snatched her into his arms with a sudden roughness, kissing her
passionately.

"You'd drive a man to madness!" he exclaimed thickly. "But I shan't
let you escape a second time," he went on with a quiet intensity of
purpose. "You'll come back with me now--to-night--to Trenby."

She made a quick gesture of negation.

"No, no, I can't--I couldn't come now!"

His grip of her tightened.

"Now!" he repeated in a voice of steel. "And I'll marry you by special
licence within a week. I'll not risk losing you again."

Nan shuddered in his arms. To go straight from that last farewell with
Peter into marriage with a man she did not love--it was unthink