t me go!" she cried, her voice quick with fear. "Let me go!
You're hurting me!"

"Hurting you?" With an effort he mastered himself, slackening his
grasp a little, but still holding her. "Hurting you? I wonder if you
realise what a woman like you can do to a man? When I first met you I
was just an ordinary decent man, and I loved and trusted you
implicitly. But now, sometimes, I almost feel that I could kill
you--to make sure of you!"

"But why should you distrust me? It's Isobel--Isobel Carson who's put
these ideas into your head."

"Perhaps she's opened my eyes," he said grimly. "They've been shut too
long."

"You've no right to distrust me--"

"Haven't I, Nan, haven't I?" He held her a little away from him and
searched her face. "Answer me! Have I no right to doubt you?"

His big chest heaved under the soft fabric of his shirt as he stood
looking down at her, waiting for her answer.

She would have given the world to be able to answer him with a simple
"No." But her lips refused to shape the word. There was so much that
lay between them, so much that was complicated and difficult to
interpret.

Slowly her eyes fell before his.

"I utterly decline to answer such a question," she replied at last.
"It's an insult."

His hands fell from her shoulders.

"I think I'm answered," he said curtly, and, turning on his heel, he
strode away, leaving Nan shaken and dismayed.

As far as Maryon was concerned, he refrained from making any allusion
to what had taken place that day in the music-room, and gradually the
sense of shocked dismay with which his proposal had filled Nan at the
time, grew blurred and faded, skilfully obliterated by his unfailing
tact. But the remembrance of it lingered, tucked away in a corner of
her mind, offering a terrible solution of her difficulties.

He still demanded from her a large part of each day, on the plea that
much yet remained to be done to the portrait, while Roger, into whose
ears Isobel continued to drop small poisoned hints, became
correspondingly more difficult and moody. The tension of the situation
was only relieved by the comings and goings of Sandy McBain and the
enforced cheerfulness assumed by the members of the Mallow household.

Neither Penelope nor Kitty sensed the imminence of any real danger.
But Sandy, in whose memory the recollection of the winter's happenings
was still alive and vivid, felt disturbed and not a little anxious.
Nan's moods were