“No, my dear.  Tell me nothing.”  He checked the impending confession hastily.  He guessed that it had some hearing upon her marriage with Trenby.  If so, it would be better left unsaid.  Just now she was tired and unstrung; later, she might regret her impulsive confidence.  He wanted to save her from that.

“Don’t tell me anything.  What’s done is done.”  He paused, then added:  “Don’t forget, Nan, a Davenant’s word is his bond—­always.”

She responded to the demand in his voice as a thoroughbred answers to the touch of the whip.  The champagne glass trembled a little in her fingers, as she took it from him, and clicked against her teeth.  She swallowed the wine and replaced the glass on the table.

“Thank you,” she said quietly.  But it wasn’t the wine for which she thanked him.  She knew, just as he had known, that she had been on the verge of utter break-down.  Her nerves, on edge throughout the whole marriage ceremony she had just witnessed, had almost given way beneath the strain, undermining the courage with which she had hitherto faced the future.

CHAPTER XIX

THE PRICE

A sense of bustle and mild excitement pervaded Trenby Hall.  The hounds were to meet some distance away, and on a hunting morning it invariably necessitated the services of at least two of the menservants and possibly those of an observant maid—­who had noted where last he had left his tobacco pouch—­to get Roger off successfully.

“My hunting boots, Jenkins!” he demanded as he issued from the library.  “And look sharp with them!  Flask and sandwich-case—­that’s right.”  He busied himself bestowing these two requisites in his pockets.

Nan, cool and unperturbed; joined him in the hall, a small, amused smile on her face.  She had stayed at Trenby long enough by now to be well used to the cyclone which habitually accompanied Roger’s departure to the meet, and the boyish unreasonableness of it—­seeing that the well-trained servants invariably had everything in readiness for him—­rather appealed to her.  He was like a big, overgrown school-boy returning to school and greatly concerned as to whether his cricket-bat and tuck-box were safely included amongst his baggage.

“You, darling?” Roger nodded at her perfunctorily, preoccupied with the necessities of the moment.  “Now, have I got my pipe?”—­slapping his pockets to ascertain.  To miss his customary pipe as he trotted leisurely home after the day’s hunting was unthinkable.  “Matches!  I’ve no matches!  Here, Morton”—­to the butler who was standing by with Roger’s hunting-crop in his hand.  “Got any matches?”

Morton produced a box at once.  He had been in Roger’s service from boyhood, fought side by side with him in Flanders, and no demand of his master’s had yet found him unprepared.  Nan was wont to declare that had Roger requested the Crown jewels, Morton would have immediately produced them from his pocket.