But this! . . .  This solemn “I charge ye both . . .”—­Nan read on—­“If either of you know any impediment why ye may not be lawfully joined together in matrimony, ye do now confess it.”

There would certainly be an impediment in her own case, since the bride was in love with someone other than the bridegroom.  Only, in the strange world we live in, that is not regarded in the light of a “lawful” impediment, so she wouldn’t need to confess it—­at least, not to anyone except Roger, and her sense of fair play had already impelled her to do that.

Her eyes flew along the words of the service, skimming hastily over the tender beauty of the vows the man and woman give each other.  For they are only beautiful if love informs them.  To Nan they were rather terrifying with their suggestion of irrevocability.

“So long as ye both shall live . . .”

Why, she and Roger were young enough to anticipate thirty or forty years together!  Thirty or forty years—­before death came and released them from each other.

“Then shall the priest join their right hands together and say, Those whom God hath joined together, let no man put asunder.”

Nan stretched out a slender right hand and regarded it curiously.  Some time to-morrow—­at about half-past twelve, she supposed—­the priest would join the hands of Penelope and Ralph and henceforth there would be no sundering “till death did them part.”

Driven by circumstances, she had not stopped to consider the possible duration of marriage when she pledged her word to Roger, and during the time which had elapsed since she left Mallow the vision of the Roger who had sometimes jarred upon her, irritating her by his narrowed outlook and his lack of perception, had inevitably faded considerably, as the memory of temperamental irritations is apt to do as soon as absence has secured relief from them.

Latterly, Nan had been feeling quite affectionately disposed towards him—­he was really rather a dear in some ways!  And she had accepted an invitation to spend part of the winter at Trenby Hall.

The Seymours had planned to go abroad for several months and, since Penelope would be married and on tour, it had seemed a very natural solution of matters.  So that when Lady Gertrude’s rather stiffly-worded letter of invitation had arrived, Nan accepted it, determining in her own mind that, during the visit, she would try to overcome her mother-in-law’s dislike to her.  The knowledge of how much Roger loved her and of how little she was really able to give him in return, made her feel that it was only playing the game to please him in any way she could.  And she recognised that to a man of Roger’s ideas, the fact that his wife and mother were on good terms with one another would be a source of very definite satisfaction.

But now, as she re-read the solemn phrase:  So long as ye both shall live, she was seized with panic.  To be married for ten, twenty, forty years, perhaps, with never the hand of happy chance—­the wonderful, enthralling “might be” of life—­to help her to endure it!  With a little stifled cry she sprang up and began pacing the room restlessly—­up and down, up and down, her slim hands clenching and unclenching as she walked.