stayed
there alone--heaps of times--when the other was away."

"Very possibly." There was an edge to Lady Gertrude's voice which it was
impossible to misinterpret. "Professional musicians are very lax--I
suppose _you_ would call it Bohemian--in their ideas. That I can quite
believe. But you have someone else to consider now. Roger would hardly
wish his future wife to be stopping alone at a flat in London."

Nan was silent. Ridiculous as it seemed, she had to admit that Lady
Gertrude was speaking no more than the bare truth concerning Roger's
point of view. She felt perfectly sure that he would object--very
strenuously!

Lady Gertrude rose.

"I think there is no more to be said. You can put any idea of rushing
off to London out of your head. Even if Roger were agreeable, I should
not allow it while you are in my charge. Neither is it exactly
complimentary to us that you should even suggest such a thing."

With this parting comment she quitted the room, leaving Nan staring
stonily out of the window.

She felt helpless--helpless to withstand the thin, steel-eyed woman who
was Roger's mother. Nominally free, she was to all intents and purposes
a prisoner at Trenby Hall till Kitty or Penelope came home. Of course
she could write to Lord St. John if she chose. But even if she did, he
most certainly could not ask her to stay with him at his chambers in
London. Besides, she didn't want to appeal to him. She knew he would
think she was running away--playing the coward, and that it would be a
bitter disappointment to him to find her falling short of the high
standard which he had always set before her.

"_No Davenant was ever a coward in the face of difficulties_," he had
told her. And she loved him far too much to hurt him as grievously as
she knew it would hurt him if she ran away from them.

She stood there for a long time, staring dumbly out at the falling rain
and dripping trees. She was thinking along the lines which St. John had
laid down for her. "_Don't make Roger pay for your own blunder_." Was
she doing that? Remembering all that had passed between them last night
she began to realise that this was just what she had been doing.

She had no love to give him, but she had been keeping him out of
everything else as well. She had not even tried to make a comrade of
him, to let him into her interests and to try and share his own.
Instead, she had shut herself away in the West Parlour with her mu