“When are we going to Mallow?” asked Nan fretfully.  “I’m so tired of staring at those houses across the way.”

Barry turned his head and regarded the houses opposite reflectively.

“They’re not inspiring, I admit,” he answered, “even though many of them are the London habitations of belted earls and marquises.”

“We’ll go to Mallow as soon as you like,” interposed Kitty.  “I think you’re quite fit to stand the journey now.”

“Fit?  Of course I’m fit.  Only”—­Nan’s face clouded—­“it will mean your leaving town just when the season’s in full swing.  I shan’t like dragging you away.”

“Season?” scoffed Kitty.  “Season be blowed!  The only thing that matters is whether you’re strong enough to travel.”

She regarded Nan affectionately.  The latter had no idea how dangerously ill she had been.  She remembered Roger’s visit to the flat perfectly clearly.  But everything which followed had been more or less a blank, with blurred intervals of doubtful clarity, until one day she found herself lying in a bed with Kitty standing at its foot and Peter sitting beside it.  She recollected quite well observing: 

“Why, Peter, you’ve got some grey hairs!  I never noticed them before.”

Peter had laughed and made some silly reply about old age creeping on, and presently it seemed to her that Kitty, crying blindly, had led him out of the room while she herself was taken charge of by a cheerful, smiling person in a starched frock, whose pretty, curling hair insisted on escaping from beneath the white cap which coifed it.

Unknown to Nan, those were the first rational words she had spoken since the night on which she had fainted, after refusing to return to Trenby Hall with Roger.  Moved by some inexplicable premonition of impending illness, Kitty had insisted on driving her, carefully pillowed and swaddled in rugs, to her house in Green Street that same evening.

“If she’s going to be ill,” she remarked practically, “it will be much easier to nurse her at my place than at the flat.”

Results had justified her.  During the attack of brain fever which followed, it had required all the skill of doctors and nurses to hold Nan back from the gates of death.  The fever burnt up her strength like a fire, and at first it had seemed as though nothing could check the delirium.  All the strain and misery of the last few months poured itself out in terrified imaginings.  Wildly she besought those who watched beside her to keep Roger away from her, and when the fear of Roger was not present, the whole burden of her speech had been a pitiful, incessant crying out for Peter—­Peter!

Nothing would soothe her, and at last, in desperation, Kitty had gone to Mallory and begged him to come.  His first impulse had been to refuse, not realising the danger of Nan’s illness.  Then, when it was made clear to him that her sole chance of life lay in his hands, he had stifled his own feelings and consented at once.