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.
Unknown, even to himself, Roger's passion had been gradually rising
towards flood-tide. Man being by nature a contradictory animal, the
attitude assumed by his mother and cousin towards the woman who was to
be his wife had seemed to fan rather than smother the flame.

All at once the curb had snapped. He wanted Nan, the same Nan with
whom he had fallen in love--the inconsequent feminine thing of elusive
frocks and absurd, delicious faults and weaknesses--rather than a Nan
moulded into shape by Lady Gertrude's iron hand. An intense resentment
of his mother's interference had been gradually growing up within him.
He would do all the moulding that was required, after matrimony!

Not that he put all this to himself in so many words. But a sense of
revolt, an overwhelming jealousy of everyone who made any claim at all
on Nan--jealousy even of that merry Bohemian life of hers in which he
had had no share--had been slowly gathering within him until it was
almost more than he could endure. Isobel's taunts at dinner had half
maddened him. Whether he were Philistine or not, Nan had promised to
marry him, and he would know neither rest nor peace of mind until that
promise were fulfilled.

And Nan, as she lay in bed with wide eyes staring into the darkness,
felt as though the door of the cage were slowly closing upon her.

CHAPTER XXI

LADY GERTRUDE'S POINT OF VIEW

It was a cheerless morning. Gusts of fine, sprinkling rain drove hither
and thither on a blustering wind, while overhead hung a leaden sky with
patches of black cloud scudding raggedly across it.

Nan, coming slowly downstairs to breakfast, regarded the state of the
weather as merely in keeping with everything else. The constant friction
of her visit to Trenby had been taking its daily toll of her natural
buoyancy, and last night's interview with Roger had tried her frayed
nerves to the uttermost. This morning, after an almost sleepless night,
she felt that to remain there any longer would be more than she could
endure.