Outside, a groom was patiently walking a couple of horses up and down.  Quivering, velvety nostrils snuffed the keen air while gleaming black hoofs danced gently on the gravel drive, executing little side steps of excitement—­for no hunting day comes round but that in some mysterious way the unerring instinct of the four-legged hunter acquaints him of the fact.  Further along clustered the pack, the hounds padding restlessly here and there, but kept within bounds by the occasional crack of a long-lashed crop or a gruff command from one of the whips.

Nan was always conscious of a curious intermingling of feeling when, as now, she watched Roger ride away at the head of his hounds.  The day she had almost lost her life at the kennels recurred to her mind inevitably—­those moments of swift and terrible danger when it seemed as though nothing could save her.  And with that memory came another—­the memory of Roger flinging himself forward to the rescue, forcing back with bare hands the great hound which had attacked her.  A quick thrill—­the thrill of primitive woman—­ran through her at the recollection.  No woman can remain unmoved by physical courage—­more especially if it is her own imperative need which has called it forth.

That was the side of Roger which she liked best to dwell upon.  But she was rapidly learning that he had other less heroically attractive sides.  No man who has been consistently spoiled and made much of by a couple of women is likely to escape developing a certain amount of selfishness, and Nan had already discovered that Roger was somewhat inclined to play the autocrat.  As he grew accustomed to her presence in the house he settled down more or less tranquilly into the normal ways of existence, and sometimes, when things went awry, he would lose his temper pretty badly, as is the natural way of man.

Unfortunately, Nan’s honest endeavours to get on better terms with her future mother-in-law met with no success.  Lady Gertrude had presented an imperturbably polite and hostile front almost from the moment of the girl’s arrival at the Hall.  Even at dinner the first evening, she had cast a disapproving eye upon Nan’s frock—­a diaphanous little garment in black:  with veiled gleams of hyacinth and gold beneath the surface and apparently sustained about its wearer by a thread of the same glistening hyacinth and gold across each slender shoulder.

With the quickness of a squirrel Isobel Carson, demurely garbed as befitted a poor relative, noted the disapprobation conveyed by Lady Gertrude’s sweeping glance.

“I suppose that’s what they’re wearing now in town?” she asked conversationally of Nan across the table.

Roger looked up and seeing the young, privet-white throat and shoulders which gleamed above the black, smiled contentedly.

“It’s jolly pretty, isn’t it?” he rejoined, innocently unaware that any intention lurked behind his cousin’s query.