"Unfortunately they're all that Providence has seen fit to provide,"

replied Penelope, with her usual bluntly philosophical acceptance of facts.

"And yet--we men don't understand women. We're constantly hurting them with our clumsy misconceptions--with our failure to respond to their complexities."

Penelope's eyes grew kind.

"I don't think you would," she said.

"Ah, my dear, I'm an old man now and perhaps I understand. But there was a time when I understood no better than the average youngster who gaily asks some nice woman to trust her future in his hands--without a second thought as to whether he's fit for such a trust. And that was just the time when a little understanding would have given happiness to the woman I loved best on earth."

He spoke rather wearily, but contrived a smile as Nan entered, carrying a cup of coffee in her hand.

"My compliments, Nan. Your coffee equals that of any Frenchwoman."

"A reversion to type. Don't forget that Angele de Varincourt is always at the back of me."

St. John laughed and drank his coffee appreciatively, and after a little further desultory conversation took his departure, leaving the two girls alone together.

"Isn't he a perfect old dear?" said Nan.

"Yes," agreed Penelope. "He is. And he absolutely spoils you."

Nan gave a little grin.

"I really think he does--a bit. Imagine it, Penny, after our strenuous economies! Six hundred a year in addition to our hard-earned pence!

Within limits it really does mean pretty frocks, and theatres, and taxis when we want them."

Penelope smiled at her riotous satisfaction. Nan lived tremendously in the present--her capacity for enjoyment and for suffering was so intense that every little pleasure magnified itself and each small fret and jar became a minor tragedy.

But Penelope was acutely conscious that beneath all the surface tears and laughter there lay a hurt which had not healed, the ultimate effect and consequence of which she was afraid to contemplate.

CHAPTER IV

THE SKELETON IN THE CUPBOARD

"Nan, may I introduce Mr. Mallory?"

It was the evening of Kitty's little dinner--a cosy gathering of sympathetic souls, the majority of whom were more or less intimately known to each other.

"As you both have French blood in your veins, you can chant the Ma.r.s.eillaise in unison." And with a nod and smile Kitty pa.s.sed on to where her husband was chatting with Ralph Fenton, the well-known baritone, and a couple of members of Parliament. Each of them had cut a niche of his own in the world, for Kitty was discriminating in her taste, and the receptions at her house in Green Street were always duly seasoned with the spice of brains and talent.

As Nan looked up into the face of the man whose acquaintance she had already made in such curious fashion, the thought flashed through her mind that here, in his partly French blood was the explanation of his unusual colouring--black brows and lashes contrasting so oddly with the kinky fair hair which, despite the barber's periodical shearing and the fervent use of a stiff-bristled hair-brush, still insisted on springing into crisp waves over his head and refused to lie flat.

"What luck!" he exclaimed boyishly. "I must be in the Fates' good books to-night. What virtuous deed can I have done to deserve it?"

"Playing the part of Good Samaritan might have counted," suggested Nan, smiling. "Unless you can recall any particularly good action which you've performed in the interval."

"I don't think I've been guilty of a solitary one," he replied seriously. "May I?" He offered his arm as the guests began trooping in to dinner--Penelope appropriately paired off with Fenton, whom she had come to know fairly well in the course of her professional work.

Although, as she was wont to remark, "Ralph Fenton's a big fish and I'm only a little one." They were chattering happily together of songs and singers.

"So France has a partial claim, on you, too?" remarked Mallory, unfolding his napkin.

"Yes--a great-grandmother. I let her take the burden of all my sins."

"Not a very heavy one, I imagine," he returned, smiling.

"I don't know. Sometimes"--Nan's eyes grew suddenly pensive--"sometimes I feel that one day I shall do something which will make the burden too heavy to be shunted on to great-grandmamma! Then I'll have to bear it myself, I suppose."

"There'll be a pal or two around, to give you a hand with it, I expect," answered Mallory.

"I don't know if there will even be that," she answered dreamily. "Do you know, I've always had the idea that sometime or other I shall get myself into an awful hole and that there won't be a single soul in the world to get me out of it."

She spoke with an odd note of prescience in her voice. It was so p.r.o.nounced that the sense of foreboding communicated itself to Mallory.

"Don't talk like that. If you think it, you'll be carried forward to just such disaster on the current of the thought. Be sure--quite, quite sure--that there will be someone at hand, even if it's only me"--quaintly.

"The Good Samaritan again? But you mightn't know I was in a difficulty," she protested.

"I think I should always know if you were in trouble," he said quietly.

There was a new quality in the familiar lazy drawl--something that was very strong and steady. Although he had laid no stress on the word "you," yet Nan was conscious in every nerve of her that there was an emphatic individual significance in the brief words he had just uttered. She shied away from it like a frightened colt.

"Still you mightn't come to the rescue, even if I were struggling in the quicksands," she answered.

"I should come," he said deliberately, "whether you wanted me to come or not."

Followed a brief pause, charged with a curious emotional tensity. Then Mallory remarked lightly:

"I enjoyed the Charity Concert at Exeter."

"Were you there?" exclaimed Nan in surprise.

"Certainly I was there. When I was as near as Abbencombe, you don't suppose I was going to miss the chance of hearing you play, do you?"

"I never thought of your being there," she answered.

"And now that I know you've French blood in your veins, I can understand what always puzzled me in your playing."

"What was that?"

"The un-English element in it."

Nan smiled.

"Am I too unreserved then?" she shot at him.