"What on earth are you giggling about, Kitty?"

"At the lion endeavouring to lie down with the lamb," submitted Kitty meekly.

"Don't talk in parables."

"It's a very easy one to interpret"--Kitty succ.u.mbed once more to a gale of laughter. "It was just too delicious to watch you and Roger together! You'd much better leave him alone, my dear, and play with the dolls you're used to."

"How detestable you are, Kitty. I promise you one thing--it's going to be much worse for the lion than the lamb."

Mrs. Barry Seymour sat up suddenly, the laughter dying out of her eyes.

"Nan," she admonished, "you leave Roger alone. He's as Nature made him and not fair game for such as you. Leave him to some simple country maiden--Edna Langdon, for instance, who rides straight to hounds and whose broad acres--or what will be her broad acres when Papa Langdon is gathered--'march' with his."

"Surely I can out-general her?"--impertinently.

"Out-general her? Of course you can. But that's just what you mustn't do. I won't allow you to play with Roger. He's too good a sort--even if he is a bit heavy in hand."

"I agree. He's quite a good sort. But he needs educating. . . . And perhaps I'm not going to 'play' with him."

"Not? Then what . . . Nan, you never mean to suggest that you're in earnest?"

Nan regarded her consideringly.

"And why not, pray? Isn't he well-seeming? Hasn't he broad acres of his own? Do I not find favour in his eyes? . . . Surely the last four weeks have shown you that much?"

Kitty made a small grimace.

"They certainly have. But seriously, this is all nonsense, Nan. You and Roger Trenby are about as unsuited to each other as any man and woman could possibly be. In addition to which he has the temper of a fiend when roused--and you'd be sure to rouse him! You know a dozen men more suitable!"

"Do I? It seems to me I'm particularly dest.i.tute of men friends just now, either 'suitable' or otherwise. They've been giving me the cold shoulder lately with commendable frequency. So why not the M.F.H. and his acres?"

Kitty detected the bitter, hurt note in her voice, and privately congratulated herself on a letter she had posted only the previous evening telling Peter that everything was obviously over between Nan and Maryon Rooke, as the latter had failed to put in an appearance at St. Wennys--and would he come down to Mallow Court? With Peter once more at hand, she felt sure he would be able to charm Nan's bitterness away and even prevent her, in some magical way of his own, from committing such a rash blunder as marriage with Trenby could not fail to be.

She had been feeling rather disturbed about Nan ever since they had come to Mallow. The Nan she knew, wayward, tantalising, yet always lovable, seemed to have disappeared, and instead here was this embittered, moody Nan, very surely filled with some wild notion of defying fate by marrying out of hand and so settling for ever the disappointments of the past--and whatever chances of happiness there might be waiting for her in the lap of destiny. Settling them in favour of one most final and lasting disappointment of them all--of that Kitty felt convinced.

"Nan, don't be a fool!" she insisted vehemently. "You'd be wretched if you married the wrong man--far, far more wretched in the future than you've ever been in the past. You'd only repent that last step once, and that would be--always!"

"My dear Kit, I've taken so many steps that I've repented! But when you're in the middle of a staircase you must inevitably continue taking steps--either up or down. And if I take this one, and repent it--well, at all events it will be the last step."

"Not necessarily," replied Kitty drily.

"Where are you wandering now?" gibed Nan. "Into the Divorce Courts--or the Thames? Surely you know me better than that! I value my creature comforts far too much to exploit either, I a.s.sure you. The Divorce Courts are muddy--and the Thames is wet."

Kitty was silent a moment, her heart torn by the bitterness in the girl's voice.

"You'd regret it, I know," she insisted gravely.

Nan rose from her cushions, swinging her hat in her hand.

"Always remembering that a prophet hath no honour in his own country,"

she commented curtly over her shoulder, and sauntered away towards the house, defiantly humming the air of a scandalous little French song as she went.

Kitty sank back into the hammock, lighting a cigarette to aid her meditations. Truly matters had gone very crookedly. Maryon Rooke had been the first cause of all the trouble. Then she herself had intervened to distract Nan's thoughts by asking Peter to be a pal to her. And the net result of it all was that Peter, irrevocably bound to another woman, had fallen in love with Nan, while the latter was philandering desperately with a totally unsuitable second string.

"Dreaming, Kitty?" said a voice, and looking up with the frown still wrinkling her pretty brows, she saw Lord St. John approaching.

"If I am, it must be a nightmare, I think!" she answered lugubriously.

The old man's kindly face took on a look of concern.

"Any nightmare that I can dispel, my dear?"

Kitty patted the fine-bred, wrinkled old hand that rested on the edge of the hammock.

"I know you love to play the fairy G.o.dfather to us all, but in this case I'm afraid you can't help. In fact, you've done all you could--made her free to choose."

"It's Nan, then?" he said quickly.

Kitty laughed rather mirthlessly.

"'M. Isn't it always Nan who is causing us anxiety one way or another?"

"And just now?"

"Haven't you guessed? I'm sure you have!"

St. John's lips twisted in a whimsical smile.

"I suppose you mean that six-foot-odd of bone and muscle from Trenby Hall?"

"Of course I mean him! Just because she's miserable over that Rooke business and because Roger is as insistent as a man with that kind of chin always is, she'll be Mrs. Roger before we can stop her--and miserable ever after!"

"Isn't the picture a trifle overdrawn?" St. John pulled forward one of the garden chairs and sat down. "Trenby's a very decent fellow, I should imagine, and comes of good old stock."

"Oh, yes, he's all that." Kitty metaphorically tossed the whole pack of qualifications into the dustbin. "But he's got the devil's own temper when he's roused and he's filled to the brim with good old-fashioned notions about a man being master in his own house, et cetera. And no man will ever be master in his own house while Nan's in it--unless he breaks her."

St. John stirred restlessly.

"Things are a bit complicated sometimes, aren't they?" he said in a rather tired voice. "Still"--with an effort--"we must hope for the best. You've jumped far ahead of the actual state of affairs at present."

"Roger's tagging round after her from morning to night."

"He's not the first man to do that," submitted Lord. St. John, smiling, "Nan is--Nan, you know, and you mustn't a.s.sume too much from Roger's liking to be with her. I'm sure if I were one of her contemporary young men, I should 'tag round' just like the rest of 'em. So don't meet trouble half way."

"Optimist!" said Kitty.

"Oh, no." The disclaimer came quickly. "Philosopher."