Peter nodded.

“Yes.  I’ve only met her two or three times, but I’m quite sure she is the right person.  I believe,” he added, smiling gently, “that I know your mother better than you do, Sandy.”

And it would appear that this was really the case.  For when, in the small hours of the morning, the trio reached Trevarthen Wood and Sandy had effected an entry and aroused his mother, there followed a brief interview between Peter and Mrs. McBain, from which the latter emerged with her grim mouth all tremulous at the corners and her keen eyes shining through a mist of tears.

Sandy and Nan were waiting together in the hall, and both looked up anxiously as she bore down upon them.

To the ordinary eye she may have appeared merely a very plain old woman, arrayed in a hideous dressing-gown of uncompromising red flannel.  But to Nan, as the bony arms went round her and the Scottish voice, harsh no longer but tender as an old song, murmured in her ears, she seemed the embodiment of beautiful, consoling motherhood, and her flat chest a resting-place where weary heads might gladly lie and sorrowful hearts pour out their grief in tears.

“Dinna greet, ma bairnie,” crooned Eliza.  “Ma wee bairnie, greet nae mair.”

CHAPTER XXXIV

THE WHITE FLAME

It was not till late in the afternoon of the day following upon her flight from Mallow that Nan and Peter met again.  He had, so Sandy informed her, walked over to the Court in order to see Kitty.

“I think he has some private affair of his own that he wants to talk over with her,” explained Sandy.

“It’s about his wife, I expect,” answered Nan dully.  “She’s had sunstroke—­and is ordered home from India.”

“Poor devil!” The words rushed from Sandy’s lips.  “How rotten everything is!” he added fiercely, with youth’s instinctive revolt against the inevitableness of life’s pains and penalties.

“And I’ve hardly mended matters, have I?” she submitted rather bitterly.

He slipped a friendly arm round her neck.

“Don’t you worry any,” he said, with gruff sympathy.  “Mallory’s fixed up everything—­and it all dovetails in neatly with Kitty’s saying you were staying with friends for the night.  You’re staying here—­do you see?  And Mallory and the mater between ’em have settled that you’re to prolong your visit for a couple of days—­to give more colour to the proceedings, so to speak!  You’ll emerge without a stain on your character!” he went on, trying with boyish clumsiness to cheer her up.

“Oh, don’t, Sandy!” Her lip quivered.  “I—­I don’t think I mind much about that.  I feel as if I’d stained my soul.”

“Well, if there were no blacker souls around than yours, old thing, the world would be a darned sight nicer place to live in!  And that’s that.”

Nan contrived a smile.