“Roger Trenby will be wishin’ Isobel Carson back home!  I hear Lady Gertrude keeps him dancing attendance on her from morn till night, declaring she’s at death’s door the while.”

Sandy grinned.

“Yes, Roger ’phoned an hour ago and asked to speak to you, Nan—­he’d heard you were staying here.  I said you were taking a nap.”

Nan smiled faintly across at him.

“Thank you, Sandy,” she said.  She had no wish either to see or speak to Roger just now.  There was something that must be fought out and decided before he and she met again.

Aunt Eliza bustled her off early to bed that night and she went thankfully—­not to sleep, but to search out her own soul and make the biggest decision of her life.

It was not till the moon-pale fingers of dawn came creeping in through the chinks betwixt blind and window that Nan lay back on her pillows knowing that for good or ill she had taken her decision.

Something of the immensity of love, its heights and depths, had been revealed to her in those tense silences she had shared with Peter, and she knew that she had been untrue to the love within her—­untrue from the very beginning when she had first pledged herself to Roger.

She had rushed headlong into her engagement with him, driven by cross-currents that had whirled her hither and thither.  Afterwards, when the full realisation of her love for Peter had overwhelmed her, her pride—­the dogged, unyielding pride of the Davenants, whose word was their bond—­had held her to her promise.

It had been a matter of honour with her.  Now she was learning that utter loyalty to love involved a higher, finer honour than a spoken pledge given by a reckless girl who had thought to find safety for herself and happiness for her friend by giving it.

For Peter, that faithfulness of the spirit, of which he had spoken, alone was possible.  The woman he had married had her claims upon him.  But as far as she herself was concerned, Nan realised that she could yet keep her love pure and untouched, faithful to the mystic three-fold bond of spirit, soul, and body.

. . .  She would never marry Roger now.  To-morrow she would write and tell him so.  That he would storm and rage and try to force her to retract this new decision she was well aware.  But that would only be part of the punishment which she must be prepared to suffer.  There would, too, be a certain amount of obloquy and gossip to be faced.  People in general would say she had behaved dishonourably.  But, whatever the result, she was ready to bear it.  It would be a very small atonement for her sin against love!

* * * * * *

The following day she returned to Mallow Court to be greeted warmly by Kitty.  Once or twice the latter glanced at her a trifle uneasily as though she sensed something different in her, but it was not until later on, over a fire lit to cheat the unwonted coolness of the evening, that Nan unburdened herself.