During the day or two which intervened before the family exodus, Nan could hardly contain her impatience.  Their absence would give her the opportunity she longed for—­the opportunity to get away from Trenby!  The idea had flashed into her mind the instant Lady Gertrude had informed her she would be left alone there, and now each hour that must elapse before she could carry out her plan seemed an eternity.

Following upon the prolonged strain of the preceding three months, that last terrible scene with Roger had snapped her endurance.  She could not look back upon it without shuddering.  Since the day of its occurrence she had hardly spoken to him, except at meal times when, as if by mutual consent, they both conversed as though nothing had happened—­for Lady Gertrude’s benefit.  Apart from this, Nan avoided him as much as possible, treating him with a cool, indifferent reserve he found difficult to break down.  At least, he made no very determined effort to do so.  Perhaps he was even a little ashamed of himself.  But it was not in his nature to own himself wrong.

Like many men, he had a curiously implicit faith in the principle of “letting things blow over.”  On occasion this may prove the wisest course to adopt, but very rarely in regard to a quarrel between a man and woman.  Things don’t “blow over” with a woman.  They lie hidden in her heart, gradually permeating her thoughts until her whole attitude towards the man in question has hardened and the old footing between them become irrecoverable.

Nan felt that she had made her effort—­and failed.  Roger had missed the whole meaning of her attempt to bring about a mutual feeling of good comradeship, brushed it aside as of no importance.  And instead, he had substituted his own imperious demands, rousing her, once the stress of the actual interview itself was past, to fierce and bitter revolt.  No matter what happened in the future, she must get away now—­snatch a brief respite from the daily strain of her life at the Hall.

But with an oddly persistent determination she put away from her all thought of breaking off her engagement.  To most women similarly situated this would have been the obvious and simplest solution of the problem.  But it seemed to Nan that her compact with Roger demanded a finer, more closely-knit interpretation of the word honour than would have been necessary in the case of an engagement entered into under different circumstances.  The personal emergency which had driven her into giving Roger her promise weighed heavily upon her, and she felt that nothing less than his own consent would entitle her to break her pledge to him.  When she gave it she had thought she was buying safety for herself and happiness for Penelope—­cutting the tangled threads in which she found herself so inextricably involved—­and now, as Lord St. John had reminded her, she could not honourably refuse to pay the price.  She could not plead that she had mistaken her feelings towards him.  She had pledged her word to him, open-eyed, and she was not free, as other women might be, to retract the promise she had given.