"Don't be so absurd, Roger," she said contemptuously. "Isobel was only joking. It was very silly of her, but it's sillier still for you to take any notice of what she said."

"She was _not_ joking. You've shown it clearly enough--ever since you came here--that you're dissatisfied--bored! Do you suppose I haven't seen it? I'm not blind! And I won't stand it! If your music is going to come between us, I'll smash the piano--"

"Roger! You ridiculous person!"

She was smiling now. Something in his anger reminded her of an enraged small boy. It woke in her the eternal motherhood which lies in every woman and she felt that she wanted to comfort him. She could forgive him his violence. In his furious antagonism towards the art which meant so much to her, she traced the combined influence of Lady Gertrude and Isobel. Not merely the latter's pin-p.r.i.c.ks at dinner this particular evening, but the constant pressure of criticism of which she was the subject.

"You ridiculous person! If you did smash the piano, it wouldn't make me any less a musician. And"--lightly--"I really can't have you being jealous of an inanimate thing like a grand piano!"

Roger's frown relaxed a little. His threat to smash the piano sounded foolish even in his own ears. But he hated the instrument none the less, although without precisely knowing why. Subconsciously he was aware that the real Nan still eluded him. She was his in the eyes of the world--pledged to be his wife--yet he knew that although he might possess her body it would bring him no nearer the possession of her soul and spirit. That other man--the one for whom she had told him she once cared--held those! Trenby was not given to psychological a.n.a.lysis, but in a blind, bewildered fashion he felt that that thing of wood and ivory and stretched strings represented in concrete form everything that stood betwixt himself and Nan.

"Have I nothing else--_no one else_"--significantly---"to be jealous of?" he demanded. "Answer me!"

With a swift movement he gripped her by the shoulder, forcing her to face him again, his eyes still stormy. She winced involuntarily under the pressure of his fingers, but forced herself to answer him.

"You know," she said quietly. "I told you when you asked me to be your wife that--that there was--someone--for whom I cared. But, if you believed _all_ I told you then--you know, too, that you have no reason to be jealous."

"You mean because you can't marry him?"--moodily.

"Yes."

The brief reply acted like a spark to tinder. With a stifled exclamation he caught her up in his arms, crushing his mouth down on hers till her lips felt bruised beneath his kisses.

"It's not enough!" he said, his voice hoa.r.s.e and shaken. "It's not enough! I want you--the whole of you, Nan--Nan!"

For an instant she struggled against him--almost instinctively. Then, remembering she had given him the right to kiss her if he chose, she yielded, surrendering pa.s.sively to the fierce tide of his pa.s.sion.

"Kiss me!" he insisted hotly.

She kissed him obediently. But there was no warmth in her kiss, no answering thrill, and the man knew it. He held her away from him, his sudden pa.s.sion chilled.

"Is that the best you can do?" he demanded, looking down at her with something grimly ironic in his eyes. She steadied herself to meet his glance.

"It is--really, Roger," she replied earnestly. "Oh!"--flushing swiftly--"you must know it!"

"Yes"--with a shrug. "I suppose I ought to have known it. I'm only a second string, after all."

There was so much bitterness in his voice that Nan's heart was touched to a compa.s.sionate understanding.

"Ah! Don't speak like that!" she cried tremulously. "You know I'm giving you all I can, Roger. I've been quite fair with you--quite honest. I told you I had no love to give you, that I could never care for anyone again,--like that. And you said you would be content," she added with reproach.

"I know I did," he answered sullenly. "But I'm not. No man who loved you would be content! . . . And I'm never sure of you. . . . You hate it here--"

"But it will be different when we are married," she said gently.

Surely it _would_ be different when they were alone together in their own home without the perpetual irritation of Isobel's malicious little thrusts and Lady Gertrude's implacability?

"My G.o.d, yes! It'll he different then. I shall have you to _myself_!"

"Your mother?" she questioned, a thought timidly.

"She--and Isobel--will go to the dower house. No"--reading her thoughts--"they won't like it. They don't want to go. That's natural enough. Once I thought--" He checked himself abruptly, wondering how he could ever have conceived it possible that his mother might remain on at the Hall after his marriage. "But not now! I'll have my wife to myself"--savagely. "Nan, how long am I to wait?"

A thrill of dismay ran through her. So far, he had not raised the question as to the actual date of their marriage, and she had been thankful to leave it for settlement at some vaguely distant period.

"Why--why, I couldn't he married till Kitty comes home," she faltered.

"I suppose not. When do you expect her back?"

"About the end of the month, I think, or the beginning of February."

"Then you'll marry me in April."

He made the statement with a certain grim arrogance that forbade all contradiction. He was in a curiously uncertain mood, and Nan, anxious not to provoke another storm, a.s.sented reluctantly.

"You mean that? You won't fail me?" His keen eyes searched her face as though he doubted her and sought to wring the truth from her lips.

"Yes," she said very low. "I mean it."

He left her then, and a few minutes later, when she had recovered her poise, she rejoined Lady Gertrude and Isobel in the drawing-room.

"You and Roger have been having a very long confab," remarked Isobel, looking up from the jumper she was knitting. "What does it portend?"

Her sallow, nimble fingers never paused in their work. The soft, even click of the needles went on unbrokenly.

"Nothing immediate," answered Nan. "He wants me to settle the date of our wedding, that's all."

The clicking ceased abruptly.

"And when is it to be?" Isobel's attention seemed entirely concentrated upon a dropped st.i.tch.

"Some time in April. It will have to depend a little on Mrs. Seymour's plans. She wants me to be married from her house, just as Penelope was."

Lady Gertrude was busily engaged upon the making of a utilitarian flannel petticoat for one of her protegees in the village. She anch.o.r.ed her needle carefully in the material before she laid it aside.

"Do you mean from her house in town?" she asked.

"Why, yes, I suppose so." Nan looked faintly puzzled.

"Then I hope you will re-arrange matters."

Although Lady Gertrude's manner was colder and infinitely more precise, yet the short speech held the same arrogance as Roger's "Then you'll marry me in April"--the kind of arrogance which calmly a.s.sumes that any opposition is out of the question.

"It would be the greatest disappointment to the tenantry," she continued, "if they were unable to witness the marriage of my son--as they would have done, of course, if he'd married someone of the district. So I hope"--conclusively--"that Mrs. Seymour will arrange for your wedding to take place from Mallow Court."

She picked up the flannel petticoat and recommenced work upon it again as though the matter were settled, supremely oblivious of the fact that she had succeeded, as usual, in rousing every rebellious feeling her future daughter-in-law possessed.

Nan lay long awake that night. Roger's sudden gust of pa.s.sion had taken her by surprise, filling her with a kind of terror of him. Never before had he shown her that side of himself, and she had somehow taken it for granted that he would not prove a demanding lover. He had been so diffident, so generous at the beginning, that she had been almost ashamed of the poor return which was all that she could make. But now she was suddenly face to face with the fact that he was going to demand far more of her than she was able to give.

She had not realised how much propinquity adds fuel to love's fire.