But now he had gone from her she found her faith faltering. It was too difficult--well-nigh impossible--to hold fast to the big uplift of such thought and faith as had been his.

Her marriage loomed ahead in the near future, and in spite of her dogged intention to fulfil her bargain, she dreaded unspeakably the actual day which would make her Roger's wife--compelling her to a physical and spiritual bondage from which she shrank with loathing.

But there could be no escape. None. Throughout her illness, and since then, while she had groped her way slowly back to health here at Mallow, Roger had been thoughtful and considerate to an astonishing degree. Never once, during all the hours they had pa.s.sed together, had he let that strong pa.s.sion of his break loose, though once or twice she thought she had heard it leap against the bars which prisoned it--the hot, imperious desire to which one day she must submit unmurmuringly.

Drilled by Kitty, he had been very undemanding up till now. Often he had left her with only a kindly pressure of the hand or a light kiss on her forehead, and she had been grateful to him. Grateful, too, that she had been spared a disagreeable scene with his mother. Lady Gertrude had met her without censure, even with a certain limited cordiality, and accordingly Nan, whose conscience was over-sensitive just now, had reproached herself the more severely for her treatment of her future mother-in-law.

Perhaps she would have felt rather less self-reproachful if she had known the long hours of persuasion and argument by which Roger had at last prevailed upon his mother to refrain from pouring out the vials of her wrath on Nan's devoted head. Only fear lest she might alienate the girl so completely that Roger would lose the wife he wanted had induced her to yield. She had consented at last, but with a mental reservation that when Nan was actually Roger's wife she would tell her precisely what she thought of her whenever occasion offered. Nothing would persuade her to overlook such flagrant faults in any daughter-in-law of hers!

Latterly, however, she had been considerably mollified by the Seymours'

tactful agreement to her cherished scheme that Nan's marriage should take place from Mallow Court. Actually, Kitty had consented because she considered that the longer Nan could lead an untrammelled life at Mallow, prior to her marriage, the better, and thanks to her skilful management the date was now fixed for the latter end of July.

Roger had chafed at the delay, but Kitty had been extremely firm on the point, a.s.suring him that she required as long as possible to recuperate from her recent illness. In her own mind she felt that, since Nan must inevitably go through with the marriage, every day's grace she could procure for her would help to restore her poise and strengthen nerves which had already been tried to the uttermost.

Between them, Barry and Kitty and the two Fentons--who had joined the Mallow party for a short holiday--did their utmost to make the time that must still elapse before the wedding a little s.p.a.ce of restfulness and peace, shielding Nan from every possible worry and annoyance. Even the question of trousseau was swept aside by Kitty of the high hand.

"Leave it to me. I'll see to it all," she proclaimed. "Good gracious, there's a post in the country, isn't there? Patterns can be sent and everything got under way, and finally Madame Veronique shall come down here for the fittings. So that's that!"

But in spite of Kitty's good offices, Nan was beginning to find the thorns in her path. Now that her health was more or less restored, Roger no longer exercised the same self-control. The postponing of the wedding-day to a date six weeks ahead roused him to an impatience he made no effort to conceal.

"But for your uncle's death and Kitty's prolonging your convalescence so absurdly, we should have been married by now," he told her one day with a thwarted note in his voice.

Nan shivered a little.

"Yes," she said. "We should have been married."

"Well"--his keen, grey eyes swept her face--"there'll be no further postponement. I shall marry you if the whole of your family chooses to die at the same moment. Even if you yourself were dying you should be my wife--_my wife_--first."

Roger's nature seemed to have undergone a curious change--an intensifying of his natural instincts, as it were. Those long hours of apprehension during which he had really believed that Nan had left him, followed by her illness, when death so nearly s.n.a.t.c.hed her from him, had strengthened his desire for possession, rousing his love to fever heat and setting loose within him a corresponding jealousy.

Nan could not understand his att.i.tude towards her in the very least.

In the first instance he had yielded with a fairly good grace to Kitty's advice regarding the date of the wedding, but within a few days he had suddenly become restive and dissatisfied. Had Nan known it, an apparently careless remark of Isobel Carson's had sown the seed.

"It's curious that your marriage with Nan still seems to hang on the horizon, Roger," she had remarked reflectively. "It's always 'jam to-morrow,' isn't it? You'd better take care she doesn't give you the slip altogether!"--smilingly.

Very often, since then, he would sit watching Nan with a sullen, brooding look in his eyes, and on occasion he seemed a prey to morose suspicion, when he would question her dictatorially as to what she had been doing since they had last met. At times he was roughly tender with her, abruptly pa.s.sionate and demanding, and she grew to dread these moods even more than his outbreaks of temper.

It was now more than ever impossible for her to respond, and only yesterday, when he had suddenly caught her in his arms, kissing her fiercely yet feeling her lips lie stiff and unresponsive beneath his own, he had almost flung her from him. Then, gripping her by the arm until the delicate flesh showed red and bruised beneath the pressure, he had said savagely:

"By G.o.d, Nan! I'll make you love me--or break you!"

Nan turned back her sleeve and looked at the red weals now darkening into a bruise which his grasp had made on the white skin of her arm.

Then she re-read the letter in her hand. It bore yesterday's date and was very brief.

"I'm hoping to get out of town very soon now, and I propose to come down and inspect my new property with a view to re-decorating the house. I could never live with dear G.o.dfather's Early Victorian chairs and tables! So you may expect to see me almost any day now on the doorstep of Mallow Court.

"Yours as always.

"MARYON."

Nan's first impulse was to beg him not to come. She had screwed up her courage to fulfil her pledge to marry Roger, and she felt that the presence in the neighbourhood of Maryon--Maryon with his familiar charm and attraction, and his former love for her intensified by losing her--might be a somewhat disturbing factor.

Looking out over the sea, she smiled to think how futile Maryon's charm would be to touch her if she were going to marry Peter Mallory. She would have no wish even to see him. But yesterday's scene with Roger had increased her fear and dread of her coming marriage, and she was conscious of a captive's longing for one more taste of freedom, for one more meeting with the man who had played a big part in the old Bohemian life she had loved so well.

For long she hesitated how to answer Maryon's letter, sitting there on the seaward wall, her chin cupped in her hand. Should she write and ask him to postpone his visit? Or reply just as though she were expecting him? At last her decision was taken. She tore up his letter and, strolling to the edge of the cliff, tossed the pieces into the sea. She would send no answer at all, leaving it to the shuttle of fate to weave the next strand in her life.

And a week later Maryon Rooke came down to take possession of his new domain.

"I can take six clear weeks now," he told Nan. "That's better than my first plan of week-ending down here. I have been working hard since you blew into my studio one good day, and now for six weeks I toil not, neither do I spin. Unless." he added suddenly, "I paint a portrait of you while I'm here!"

Nan glanced at him delightedly.

"I should love it. Only you won't paint my soul, will you, Maryon, as you did Mrs. T. Van Decken's?"

His eyes narrowed a little.

"I don't know, Nan. I think I should rather like to paint it. Your soul would be an intricate piece of work."

"I'm sure it wouldn't make nearly as nice a picture as my face. I think it's rather a plain soul."

"The answer to that is obvious," he replied lightly. "Well, I shall talk to Trenby about the portrait. I suppose permission from headquarters would be advisable?"

Nan made a small grimace.

"Of the first importance, my friend."

Rather to Nan's surprise, Roger quite readily gave permission for Rooke to paint her portrait. In fact, he appeared openly delighted with the idea that her charming face should be permanently transferred to canvas. In his own mind he had promptly decided to buy the portrait when completed and add it to the picture gallery at the Hall, where many a lovely Trenby of bygone generations looked down, smiling or sad, from the walls.

The sittings were begun out of doors in the tranquil seclusion of the rose garden, Rooke motoring across to Mallow almost daily, and Nan posed in a dozen different att.i.tudes while he made sketches of her both in line and colour, none of which, however, satisfied him in the least.

"My dear Nan," he exclaimed one day, as he tore up a rough charcoal sketch in disgust, "you're the worst subject I've ever encountered---or else my hand has lost its cunning! I can't get you--_you_--in the very least!"

"Oh, Maryon"--breaking her pose to look across at him with a provoking smile--"can't you find my soul, after all?"

"I don't believe you've got one. Anyway, it's too elusive to pin down on canvas. Even your face seems out of my reach. You won't look as I want you to. Any other time of the day I see just the expression on your face want to catch--the expression"--his voice dropped a shade--"which means Nan to me. But the moment you come out here and pose, it's just a pretty, meaningless mask which isn't you at all."

He surveyed her frowningly.

"After all, it _is_ your soul I want!" he said vehemently.

He took a couple of quick strides across the gra.s.s to her side.

"Give it me, Nan--the heart and soul that looks out of your eyes sometimes. This picture will never be sold. It's for me . . . me!

Surely"--with a little uneven laugh--"as I've lost the substance, you won't grudge me the shadow?"

A faint colour ran up under her clear skin.