“No,” he acknowledged.  “I didn’t.  I was afraid . . .  Good God, Nan!” he broke out with sudden passion.  “Haven’t you any idea of what I’ve been through this last forty-eight hours? . . .  It’s been hell!”

She looked at him as though amazed.

“I don’t understand,” she said impatiently.  “Please explain.”

“Explain?  Can’t you understand?” His face darkened.  “You said you couldn’t marry me—­you asked me to release you!  And then—­after that!—­I come home to find you gone—­gone with no word of explanation, and the whole household buzzing with the story that you’ve run away!  I waited for a letter from you, and none came.  Then I wired—­to safeguard you I wired from Exeter.  No answer!  What was I to think? . . .  What could I think but that you’d gone?  Gone to some other man!”

“Do you suppose if I’d left you for someone else I should have been afraid to tell you?  That I should have written an idiotic note like that? . . .  How dared you wire to Penelope?  It was abominable of you!”

“Why didn’t she reply?  I thought they must be away—­”

“That clinched matters in your mind, I suppose?” she said contemptuously.  “But it’s quite simple.  Penelope didn’t wire because I wouldn’t let her.”

He was silent.  It was quite true that since Nan’s disappearance from Trenby Hall he had been through untold agony of mind.  The possibility that she might have left him altogether in a wild fit of temper had not seemed to him at all outside the bounds of probability.  And it was equally true that when another day had elapsed without bringing further news of her, he had become a prey to the increasing atmosphere of suspicion which, thanks to the gossip that always gathers in the servants’ hall, had even spread to the village.

Nor had either his mother or cousin made the least attempt to stem his rising anger.  Far from it.  Lady Gertrude had expressed her opinion with a conciseness that was entirely characteristic.

“You made an unwise choice, my son.  Nan has no sense of her future position as your wife.”

Isobel had been less blunt in her methods, but a corrosive acid had underlain her gentle speech.

“I can’t understand it, Roger.  She—­she was fond of you, wasn’t she?  Oh”—­with a quick gesture of her small brown hands—­“she must have been!”

“I don’t know so much about the ‘must have been,’” Roger had admitted ruefully.  “She cared—­once—­for someone else.”

“Who was it?”

Isobel’s question shot out as swiftly as the tongue of an adder.

“I can’t tell you,” he answered reluctantly.  He wished to God he could!  That other unknown man of whom, from the very beginning, he had been unconsciously afraid!  He was actively, consciously jealous of him now.

Then Isobel’s subdued, shocked tones recalled him from his thoughts.

“Oh, Roger, Nan couldn’t—­she would never have run away to be—­with him?”