hasn't the least idea how unsuitable a one it is. Men rarely
get beyond a pretty face. So it devolves upon me to make you better
fitted to be his wife than you are at present."

The cold, dispassionate speech roused Nan to a fury of exasperation and
revolt. Evidently, in Lady Gertrude's mind, Roger was the only person
who mattered. She herself was of the utmost unimportance except for the
fact that he wanted her for his wife! She felt as though she were a
slave who had been bartered away to a new owner.

"You understand, now?"

Lady Gertrude's clear, unmoved accents dropped like ice into the midst of
her burning resentment.

"Yes, I do understand!" she exclaimed, in a voice that she hardly
recognised as her own. "And I think everything you've said is horrible!
If I thought Roger looked at things like that, I'd break our engagement
to-morrow! But he doesn't--I know he doesn't. It's only you who think
such hateful things. And--and I won't stay here! I--I _can't_!"

"It's foolish to talk of breaking off your engagement," returned Lady
Gertrude composedly. "Roger is not a man to be picked up and put down at
any woman's whim--as you would find out if you tried to do it."

Inwardly Nan felt bitterly conscious that this was true. She didn't
believe for a moment that Roger would release her, however much she might
implore him to. And unless he himself released her, her pledge to him
must stand.

"As to going away"--Lady Gertrude was speaking again. "Where would you
go?"

"To the flat, of course."

"Do you mean to the flat you used to share with Mrs. Fenton?"--on a
glacial note of incredulity.

"Yes."

"Who is living there?"

Nan looked puzzled. What did it matter to Lady Gertrude who lived there?

"No one, just now. The Fentons are going to stay there, when they come
back, while they look for a house."

"But they are not there now?" persisted Lady Gertrude.

Nan shook her head, wondering what was the drift of so much questioning.
She was soon to know.

"Then, my dear child," said Lady Gertrude decidedly, "of course it would
be quite impossible for you to go there."

"Why impossible?"

Lady Gertrude's brows lifted, superciliously.

"I should have thought it was obvious," she replied curtly. "Hasn't it
occurred to you that it would be hardly the thing for a young unmarried
girl to be staying alone in a flat in London?"

"No, it hasn't," returned Nan bluntly. "Penelope and I have each