“This afternoon, for instance,” pursued Lady Gertrude, “Isobel and I paid several calls in the neighbourhood, and in each case your absence was a disappointment to our friends—­very naturally.”

“I—­I’m sorry,” stammered Nan.  She found it utterly incomprehensible that anyone should expect her to break off in the middle of an afternoon’s inspiration in order to pay a duty call upon some absolute strangers—­whose disappointment was probably solely due to baulked curiosity concerning Roger’s future wife.

Isobel laughed lightly and let fly one of her little two-edged shafts.

“I expect you think we’re a lot of very commonplace people, Nan,” she commented.  “Own up, now!” challengingly.

Lady Gertrude’s eyes flashed like steel.

“Hardly that, I hope,” she said coldly.

“Well, we’re none of us in the least artistic,” persisted her niece, perfectly aware that her small thrusts were as irritating to Lady Gertrude and Roger as the picador’s darts to the bull in the arena.  “So of course we must appear rather Philistine compared with Nan’s set in London.”

Roger levelled a keen glance at Nan.  There was suppressed anger and a searching, almost fierce enquiry in his eyes beneath which she shrank.  That imperious temper of his was not difficult to rouse, as she had discovered on more than one occasion since she had come to Trenby Hall, and she felt intensely annoyed with Isobel, who was apparently unable to see that her ill-timed observations were goading the pride of both Roger and his mother.

“Silence evidently gives consent,” laughed Isobel, as Nan, absorbed in her own reflections for the moment, vouchsafed no contradiction to her last remark.

Nan met the other’s mocking glance defiantly.  With a sudden wilfulness, born of the incessant opposition she encountered, she determined to let Miss Carson’s second challenge go unanswered.  She had tried—­tried desperately—­to win the affection, or even the bare liking, of Roger’s women-kind, and she had failed.  It was all just so much useless effort.  Henceforward they might think of her what they chose.

The remainder of the meal passed in a strained and uncomfortable manner.  Lady Gertrude and Isobel discussed various matters pertaining to the village Welfare Club, while Roger preserved an impenetrable silence, and though Nan made a valiant pretence at eating, lest Lady Gertrude’s gimlet eyes should observe her lack of appetite and her thin, disdainful voice comment on the fact, she felt all the time as though the next mouthful must inevitably choke her.

The long, formal meal came to an end at last, and she rose from the table with a sigh of relief and accompanied the other two women out of the room, leaving Roger to smoke his pipe alone as usual.  An instant later, to her surprise, she heard his footstep and found that he had followed them into the hall and was standing on the threshold of the library.